Eclipse
by Maeve Riannon
Summary: (Slight AU. )Kenshin returns from his last journey. But..has he fulfilled his life? THE END! All is over..surely?
1. The Doomed Man

**Note: **This is, at last, the long time promised slightly AU sequel of "To Look Into Her Eyes". (That has stayed for long at the bottom of my computer since I had to take a strong determination to END it) Don´t worry, if you haven´t read the prequel, it will look to you as a totally independent story. I´m aware that the word "sequel" can only be applied in a very loose sense.

The story takes place within the Seissou Hen timeline, in the last year of Kenshin´s life. Just by reading this chapter, you will see what changes and what stays the same.

Effusive thanks to Margit Ritzka for beta.

-**Eclipse - **

**Prelude: The Doomed Man **

It's ironic, isn't it? Just to see how life pushes us around, and protects us through a thousand perils only to strike us after a pleasant dinner, or even save us in the shape of someone who is beyond help - there's irony in this, maybe the laughter of some higher being who watches and enjoys the kabuki play. Understanding such a thing left me quite scarred back then, indeed… though now, after so long, even the deeply imbedded shock wanes and leaves me with the condescending smile of an old man.

You can't imagine how young and proud of myself I was at the time. Second helmsman on my first trip, walking the deck of the vessel that brought the last troops back home, together with General Fukushima, and who knows how many people would stand at the dock in Yokohama to watch our arrival? My spirits were high, and I even remember myself humming that idiotic little tune all day since we arrived to China. No matter how weary the soldiers were, or the occasional resentment I found in the eyes of the native population, I kept on humming. It was a time for celebration, wasn't it? Our glorious victory.

The morning on which we had planned to set sails, I recall I had a mighty hangover. My friend Arato, who speaks Chinese like a native, had been able to buy loads of drinks for everybody, and, young as I was, I didn't have that much experience in hiding all the effects the next day. _Now_, the technique does not hold any secret away from me anymore, of course, but at the time my head hurt like a thousand demons. I thanked the gods I wasn't the first helmsman.

"So when are we going to set sails?" I asked Yasuhiro, _the_ first helmsman, a bit dizzily. The sun had risen enough as to become a mite too brilliant to my eyes, and the air was exasperatingly calm, not even stirred by a slight breeze. I was starting to feel the sweat under my clothes as I sent a last glance to the lonely docks. There were only a few people walking across them, Japanese, I imagined, but the ship hadn't set sails yet.

"We're apparently still waiting for someone," he told me, lighting a cigarette and putting it into his mouth. "And the air announces storm."

"Or it's just the goddamn climate of this goddamn place," I cursed, my humour a bit affected by the feeling inside my bowels. Only for speaking so much, there was a new attack of nausea that I had to repress, and I spent some time staring at the soothing undulation of the blue waves. I must confess I _might _have fallen asleep… until some turmoil snapped me out of it.

"He's the guy we were waiting for," Yasuhiro told me, pointing at the man who was climbing the stairs to get on board. Curiously, I turned back and fixed my eyes on him, and they widened in surprise.

_He _was a frail little man in an astoundingly dirty kimono and hakama, who was valiantly carrying upstairs a bag that caused him to stumble almost at each step he made. His long and dishevelled hair was of the strangest red colour, and his neck was covered with bandages. When I saw him, several of the soldiers who were on deck had already run towards where he was, and, while one of them took the bag on his own shoulders, two more helped him go up, in spite of his evident protests.

"Who is he?" I asked Yasuhiro. My curiosity was piqued, both by such a strange display and by such a strange person. I had even forgotten about my hangover for a while, which I suppose was good.

"Syphilitic," Yasuhiro spat, his eyes fixed on the newcomer. "He's all bandaged up under those clothes."

"Then, why do they get so close to him?"

The helmsman put off the light of the cigarette with a tap, and threw it to the sea below us.

"I have no idea."

With this, we finished our brief conversation. Only five minutes later, the manoeuvres to set sail and leave the port were right on their way, and every attempt of thinking about anything else than our job was drowned in a flood of shouts, orders and movements. My face was contorted in a grimace all the time, I fear, for they seemed about to yell my head off that ominous hangover morning.

When at last we were in deep waters, speeding on our way home, I could see him leaning dangerously on the railing, his eyes fixed on the horizon with an intent glance.

* * *

Well, let's admit it once more: I was curious. From that moment on, during the first two days of travel, I always saw that funny thing there, deeply plunged into his own little world and muttering things to himself as he probed the limits of the sea with his fixed, stubborn eyes. Whenever I had to walk next to him, I covered my nose with a hand to avoid the ghastly smell of putrefaction, but there was always a soldier or other who got next to him to bring him food at intervals. They apparently liked him, as much as most of us couldn't stand his presence. I rarely take part in deck operations, my thing being the helm, but, according to my friends, whenever they had to do something he and his peculiar smell were _always _in the way. When they shouted at him to get lost, most of the times he apologised profusely and did as he was told, but there were some times when he couldn't understand what they were saying, and stayed there until someone pushed him. That usually brought problems and delays, since everybody agreed that it would bring no good to touch him and normally refused to do so. Each time that someone had bad luck in something, it was always because he had got too close.

As for me…well, as much as it will make you laugh, let's accept it also like a condescending old man. I was as credulous as anyone else, if not more. With the avidity that only curiosity can provide, I swallowed all the tales that were invented in those days about the red hair, the sickly waned cross-shaped scar on his left cheek and the too advanced symptoms… for yes, as Yasuhiro had said, all his body was covered with bandages, and under them it was easy to guess that his whole skin was broken and bleeding, exuding a less-than-pure kind of blood. His hands, which he hadn't bandaged for some reason, were always red, and once he even fell to the floor in agony, clutching his chest and yelling in a ragged breath. The soldiers took care of him then, and that's how I heard from one of them that the illness was eating his insides.

Afterwards I saw it clearly, of course, without being blinded by the clouds of superstition. The poor man was just mortally ill, like each one of us will be one day, and I sooner than most. After he had contracted syphilis, his life span could have been longer if he had wanted- as was that of many harbour girls I know - but, as I also heard from a soldier, he had travelled to China and helped many of them when they were wounded. That surprised me to no end, though I dismissed it as the greatest stupidity I had ever heard a man do… how could he take care of others when he obviously was very far from being able to help _himself_?

Anyway, weird decisions or not, the solid fact was that his fate was sealed. The most optimistic person would have given him three months of life, and it was a mystery for most why he would undertake such a useless return voyage at the very end of his life. Of course, I didn't know at the time that he had a family lovingly waiting for him. Heck! What deathly sick person would leave his family if he had one, and go to a war completely alone?

The night after the second day of sailing, the oppressing, hot calm was increasing, and most men were talking about an incoming storm. The captain ordered that all passengers should gather inside, and the people who were on duty were told to be more careful than normal. I was one of them, for bad luck had wanted me to keep the direction of the ship constant precisely that night. Believe me, I didn't doubt my capacities or fear anything even for a moment – but I cursed nonetheless. You would have, too.

As I went to take my post, I could feel the thick tension floating in the air. A mass of threatening clouds had closed above our heads, covering the light of the stars, and immediately afterwards any sign of wind, of breeze, had died away. I could feel beads of sweat rolling down my forehead, and cursed once more.

But this curse was actually to turn into a loud-voiced expletive when I saw someone perched – yes, perched - on the railing, ignoring our captain's orders. My irate glance went at once towards my companion who was on duty in that zone, but he shrugged his shoulders as if it didn't concern him and continued walking.

"Hey, you!" I shouted. I got closer to him, though of course I didn't touch him – and he needed some time to react. At this moment, in my fury, I think I may have believed that he was responsible for all this, and was there now to watch and enjoy what he had done. The human race is a race of ignorants and fools, after all, so why not me?

Yes, go ahead. Call me a hypocrite.

"Yes, sir?" he asked politely, in a soft voice. With all regret imaginable, he tore his glance away from the waves, and as soon as he did so, I don't know why, I lowered mine. The smell of putrefaction was still more hateful in this suffocating atmosphere.

"Didn't you hear the captain's orders? All passengers must get inside immediately!"

A long rumble punctuated my words, and I could feel that the first wind had broken free at last. The man gave a step forwards, and I gave one backwards, in fear that he would want to lean on me. But, fortunately he made no such attempt.

"I'm sorry," he said with a bow. "I… had forgotten."

Sighing in exasperation, for somehow I saw there was no way to blame _him _for his trespass, I watched him leave, his uncanny red hair getting tangled in the wind and whipping his back and head as he approached the door slowly and carefully. Then, I shook my head murmuring something you certainly don't want to hear, and hurried to the back of the ship to take my post.

* * *

Half an hour later, as announced, the fury of the elements fell pitilessly over us. First, in came a strong rain, and the people who were tying the sails to the masts got into a hurry to finish their work. Then, the force of the wind increased, and the waves that crashed against the ship became so large that I had to grasp the helm until my hands were white. The clouds above us glowered in a deathly yellow hue, now and then broken by the spark of lightning.

I must confess that I had never been so frightened in my whole life. With a ragged breath, I begged for the protection of all the gods whose names I could recall - just the fact that I remembered them in such a situation must prove that they really exist , and despaired at how the difficulty of directing the ship and keeping her stable was increasing by seconds. Now and then, the wind brought the cries of other sailors, who were engaged in different frenetic activities.

Damn. A ferocious wave crashed against the back of the ship and almost took me away with it. While I was trying to save my life, the ship turned and tossed, and I heard renewed cries, probably of people who were trying not to be swept off deck… or who were being swept already.

Damn. That was all I could think at that moment. I couldn't do it alone, we were going to die, and _who_ had had the fucking idea of setting sail when there was a threat of storm? Had it been our captain, or had he been pressured by General Fukushima or even someone more important? Whoever it had been, damn him for killing us.

My whole strength was engaged in trying to keep my post and do something for the wretched ship that would soon be our grave. In a fraction of a second, I briefly wondered what the old wolf Yasuhiro would have done if he had been in this post today instead of me. Maybe he would have laughed at my terror, I tried to console myself with little success.

Still, in spite of my gloomy thoughts, hope wasn't completely dead yet. Just as I was thinking about him, I heard Yasuhiro's hoarse voice calling my name. Unable to believe my good luck, I turned back, thinking it had been a trick of my imagination, but lo, there he was, grabbing a rope.

"Can you get closer?" I yelled. He waved a hand at me, and made signs to me that I wasn't able to understand. His face was red of exasperation, and I felt frustrated again.

"Goddamn son-of-a-bitch, _come here_!" I shouted. No one would need to be a great expert to know I wasn't behaving as the circumstances required. Now, as my supreme gesture of stupidity, I disengaged myself from the helm, and, taking advantage of a short period of calm, I began to walk towards him.

"No! Don't do that, you idiot!" he cried. I could hear him now, and stopped.

"What should I do?" I asked hysterically, not caring to show my weaknesses anymore. Yes, I was terrorised and I was a dreadful helmsman without experience. Who had had the bad idea of entrusting _this _to me, anyway?

"Tie it!" he roared. "Tie it securely!"

This last straw to my ego almost made me slap my head in desperation. You can't know how many times I had seen this being done before, and I had forgotten entirely about it! I had even forgotten my own name, but in my name didn't lie the clue for our survival.

Cursing a tad more, I turned my back to him, and started the perilous task of regaining my place at the helm. I would do my duty now. I would tie the accursed thing with the rope that should be….

But, to my horror, that was the exact moment that the sea chose to strike again with all its forces. As in a dream, or should I say a nightmare, I saw the gigantic wave coming towards me, and crouched instinctively. I felt the black immensity exploding against my back, rolling in front of my face and leaving me breathless, and then, the most horrible of all sensations.

I was being swept away.

I tried to shout; but all that came were helpless gurgles. I tried to breathe and regain my strength, but all that got into my lungs was salty water. My hands couldn't grab anything in those vertiginous last moments, and I was drawn back irresistibly, towards the black pits of my doom. I couldn't pray, not even curse.

A strong hand took mine, and I grasped it avidly.

As the last remainders of the fierce wave were swallowed by the ocean, I opened my eyes in anguish, for a moment thinking that I was already dead. But I was just dangling in the air, half of my body inside and the other half outside. My fall had been stopped in time, and a red hand held me with surprising force now, only one step away from my doom.

"Ya…Yasuhiro?" I asked in a ragged breath. Two haunting, violet eyes filled with determination met mine, and I had to suppress a shiver.

"_You_!" I shouted in disbelief, feeling their irises piercing my innards and tearing them apart as he scooped me up with his bandaged arms, and the familiar putrid stench reached my nostrils. Before I could say a single word, though, the sea attacked again, and in a fraction of a second he was holding me securely. His other hand was grabbing the rope I had planned to use. I was almost sure that his frail body wouldn't stand it, but it did.

"I... I…" I muttered, too upset to say a word. Like an automat, I went towards the helm and tied it as well as I could, my mind in a complete turmoil. Now, I didn't even fear the storm, I welcomed it as a distraction from my own inner storm, that raged terribly within my soul.

_Those eyes…_

When I returned to the place where I had left him, I saw that he had fainted, probably worn out by the effort. Carefully, I took him into my arms and lifted him, forgetting my earlier superstition and repugnance, even the stench, and set out to start our perilous journey back to safety. His body felt light and warm, like that of a child, and now that his eyes were closed he looked again like nothing more than a wretched sick ruin of a man. But – that's where the irony lies- he was much more. I knew now, Heaven help me. In the dark vortex of death, I had been witness of something more powerful than death or disease, shining in those eyes. Something that would never die in that man.

That night, taking the rapidly calming sea as my witness, I made an oath. While I laid his unresponsive body on sure ground, and began to sense people coming towards us from all directions, shouting and filling my ears with pointless questions, I closed my eyes, and swore that the will who had saved my life that fatidic night wouldn't make its last steps in this world alone.

(to be continued)


	2. Chapter One: Merciful Sea

**Note: **I´m very, very sorry for my uploading mistake, and for sending the prelude to the German section. Fortunately, a couple of attentive reviewers spotted some _slight _eh…language peculiarities of this written German of mine. (Aka the Latin/French shameless contamination of ages. )

**Questions brought by the reviewers:**

**The sailor: **He´s the man Kenshin saved in the first fourty seconds of Seissou Hen before being thrown overboard himself. The variation of this AU consists in him not falling overboard and arriving home in due time.

**The disease: **I think I know, more or less. It´s the only disease that fits the pattern perfectly: rashes in the skin, organ degeneration (concretely, we saw clearly the brain degeneration and the lung degeneration…he was not coughing when Sano held him, he was crying in pain), and sexual, more accurately blood transmission (we saw how Kaoru got it). And syphilis was endemic at that time and place.

On the other hand, the rest of the options that have been brought do not stand: AIDS because there was no AIDS at the time, dermal tuberculosis because it does not degenerate the brain and it´s not transmitted sexually, and leprosis because of the same reasons as tuberculosis, plus the fact that it consists on the skin falling through the effect of putrefaction, while Kenshin´s body was full of the open rashes characteristic of syphilis.

**Summary:** Kenshin returns home from China, but a slight change of Fate accelerates his arrival.

Effusive thanks to Margit for beta, and to all who reviewed.

**Disclaimer: **The characters belong to Watsuki Nobuhiro.

**Eclipse**

**Chapter One: Merciful Sea **

The young woman stared into the mirror for a long while, and blushed angrily at what she saw in its reflection. In a quick movement, she passed a hand over her forehead to try ridding her skin of the pearly brilliance of the sweat, but it just wouldn't leave.

"So you are taking your day off at the most busy day of the year?" Naora's unkind voice reached her ears for the thousandth time. Also, for the thousandth time, she could not help feeling guilty.

"I'm desolated…" she muttered. With somewhat clumsy movements, she wrapped the mirror back, and looked down. "It's a very important day for Yahiko and me, and I had to ask for permission. But Sekihara-san said he was going to get someone else for a day, didn't he?"

"And I will be stuck with someone who has no idea about the business at all," Naora grumbled, wiping her hands in a piece of cloth." Not to mention that, as she won't have to be here tomorrow, she will take every cue to steal all she pleases!"

"Sorry…" Tsubame repeated. "I hope she's a good person…"

The other woman did not deign to reply, and simply left in a huff to sweep the entrance. That was Naora in a bad day, Tsubame thought with a sigh. In spite of her true feelings of guilt for leaving her alone in such a busy time, she had to admit that her own life would be much better if those bad days weren't so _frequent_… but she had learned the advantages of taking it cheerfully long ago. After all, she did her work very well, almost as well as her previous partner, the much-missed Sekihara Tae. That the latter had married and her father had set a new restaurant in the other side of the city for her and her husband was hardly anyone's fault.

"Tsubame!" A noise of dishes falling reached her ears from the kitchen at that moment, causing the woman to be strongly tempted by the option of scurrying off without an answer. Fortunately enough, it was Naora's voice again, not one of the cooks'.

"Yes?" she asked in a meek tone, as she finished getting everything into the bag. "May I help you?"

"Your husband and that friend of yours are waiting outside," the waitress informed smugly, pointing towards the street. Her companion jumped at those words, and lost no time to grab her things and go out.

"Goodbye, Naora-san!" she cried as she passed in front of her. "Have a nice morning!"

"Is she always so… talkative?" Kaoru inquired, following the woman's quick disappearance with puzzled eyes.

"Usually, she's an ill-tempered hag," Yahiko answered for his wife. While they got slowly into motion, and started their walk down the road towards the port, he shrugged his nose as if to corroborate his words. "Tsubame, you shouldn't be so good and polite to her. You know how she takes advantage of that."

"Sorry," the young woman apologised. "But, she's really not so bad. She was just… pissed, because I left her alone on a celebration day, with loads of people that are going to eat at the restaurant…"

For a moment, the three fell silent, looking around at the spectacle that was already being displayed in front of their eyes so early in the morning. Flags were set up at the facades of most houses and hung from ropes that crossed the streets from above since the previous day, and vendors were now building their stands at both sides of the road. The air was heavy with the smell of sweetmeats and the excited cries of children who crowded the street in a greater number than usual, eager to for the parades to start. The last ship arrived today; and it was, at last, the final confirmation of the victory. Exultation reigned everywhere, a contagious joy that spread like a warm breeze around them.

_I hope it's doing Kaoru some good, _Tsubame mused as she peered discreetly at Yahiko's best friend. The woman was serious, if somewhat more lively than what she had been for months now. That feisty nature of her youth, that later had evolved into a more restrained - but not less strong - joyful drive to live her life as fully as possible and help the people who surrounded her, had slowly dwindled into a more subdued courage, and now, after the last events that had shaken her life, to smile and look happy had become nothing more than an obligation to be fulfilled in front of others. The news of the victory hadn't had any effect on her other than the hope to see her husband, for, from letters she had got from Kenshin when he still had been plunged in his diplomatic endeavours in China -s he had shown one or two to Yahiko , she was aware of disturbing truths and dreary realities that the people who sang in the streets didn't know. Kenji had left her long ago, in order to train in Kyoto with Hiko and - as Tsubame supposed - to flee from the oppression of an empty house full of memories. Her husband was seriously ill and in a foreign country at war; when they had got news from the abruptly returning diplomats that he had decided, the only one among them, to stay there and help to palliate the disasters of the conflict he had been most grossly impeded to avoid, she must have suffered even more than the day he left. Of course, she had said that she was sure that he would return, and not before everybody else did, but, promises and heart intuitions aside, _this_ was the last ship, and Kaoru should be perfectly aware that if he didn't return on this one the possibilities of not seeing him ever again would increase very much.

And there was something else still, a thing that was worrying Yahiko even more of late. As he had told Tsubame about a month ago, Kaoru had started to excuse herself from training at the dojo, and whenever she appeared there she simply sat down and gave a few instructions, refusing to take a wooden sword herself. Yahiko had teased her, saying that she was a lazy hag, that only old and venerable dojo masters did as she was doing now, and that she would lose her shape and turn into a fat and ugly woman, but those words had produced little or no effect on her. Instead of gaining weight as Yahiko had predicted, she had started losing it, and getting strangely pale. Tsubame had feared that she was eating insufficiently, and had brought her all kinds of tempting courses, but Kaoru had eaten them all without getting any better.

"I think she's just… sad," she had told Yahiko several times. "She misses Kenshin-san very much."

"When Kenshin returns she'll get back to normal again," he usually answered then, with the most adamant of convictions backing his voice. "You'll see."

That was why, deep inside, Tsubame knew that Yahiko was so anxious today. He had set all hopes of Kaoru's "return to normal" on Kenshin's arrival, and now it was Kenshin and Kaoru what he was walking to meet at the docks on this sunny morning. And she hoped, wished with all her heart, that reality suited their expectations at last.

"What a beautiful sky!" she exclaimed, looking up.

"Indeed," Kaoru answered in a soft voice. Then, as if she was speaking to herself instead of to someone else, she looked away, and lsot her eyes in the distance. "It has to mean something…"

"Kenshin will return," Yahiko assured her bluntly. "I know he will."

"Of course." The woman gave him one of her smiles, now much less faded than usual. "I know, too."

"And then, we will go celebrate it somewhere!"

"Hmmm…" Kaoru seemed in doubt about this. "I'm afraid he will return very tired. But, if what you really want is to eat, I can buy you some sweets in the next stand!"

Yahiko looked outraged at the suggestion, and both Kaoru and Tsubame laughed. The latter's glee was mainly caused by the agreeable change in the other woman, who had already smiled more on this day than in the whole last month. Maybe it was true that she _knew_, somehow…

"We're late," the young man muttered in a cutting tone, taken aback by their giggles. "The ship must be arriving now, and there are lots of people going in that direction. We should hurry."

Effectively, as they had walked a few hundred metres down the road, they had started to meet plenty of groups of people taking the direction towards the port, shouting things to each other and making a lot of noise. Some would be there to meet their relatives; others - the major part- just for the sake of the spectacle. They would find it hard to get to Kenshin in that entire crowd.

"Yahiko…" Kaoru quickened her pace, as the young couple did beside her. "I really can't believe… I'm seeing him again."

"It's difficult for me, too." he answered. "After So much time…"

"He must have missed you so much, Kaoru-san!" Tsubame intervened, looking fondly at her.

Kaoru nodded, her nostalgic glance telling the young woman without any need for words that this absence was acutely felt by both sides. Then, they had to fall silent again to save breath for their endeavours at being quicker than the people who surrounded them, and covered the greatest part of the distance like that, each one lost in his own thoughts. Some people were singing songs at the docks, probably sailors.

"Can you see the ship, Yahiko?" Kaoru cried as soon as they got to the entrance of the port. She was returning more and more to her previous self before their eyes, and now she even tried to jump in order to see over the group that walked before them… something she had not done in _years_!

"I think I… Yes! It's already there, Kaoru!" he suddenly shouted, spotting it in the distance. Tsubame pressed her friend's hand with glee and anxiousness, and, getting behind him with her, they started an odyssey of pushing, turning and apologising to reach the place. It was almost as if they had grown wings in an instant.

"Sorry! I'm very sorry…" Tsubame tried to apologise to a few enraged people that she was made to push. She had never felt so ashamed in her whole life, but Yahiko and Kaoru were pulling her with them at an astonishing speed. Next to the ship, the crowd thickened considerably, and she found herself trapped in a suffocating dead point with her husband and her friend.

"Oh, no!" she exclaimed. "What are we going to do now?"

"Yahiko…," Kaoru started, in a worried tone. Before she was even able to end her sentence, though, Tsubame could hear the hoarse voice of a man addressing them.

"Hey, you three! Over here… quick!"

Curious, the young woman tried to peer in front of her, but to no avail. There were too many obstacles, too little space to see anything. Still, at that moment Yahiko started pushing Kaoru forward again, and she felt pushed as well past the crowd and into a new free way that somehow had appeared in front of them. She did not know who had miraculously helped them, but her heart was filled with hope and gratitude.

"Kaoru-san… do you see Kenshin-san?" she asked, lifting her voice to a degree that was not usual for her at all. People's backs, necks and heads were now dancing past her in a vertiginous procession, and her breath came out ragged. "Who's guiding us?"

"A sailor," the woman answered. "He must know where he is!"

Suddenly, the men in front stopped, and Tsubame had enough time to do the same before she collided with Kaoru's back. The young woman needed little time to get the reason why: they had got past the crowd, and were at the entrance of the improvised borderline made of various objects that had been set to prevent the people from getting too close to the ship and the stairs.

"Wait for me here," the man instructed them. Now, as he ran away towards the stairs, she was able to catch a glimpse of him. He was, effectively, a sailor dressed in dirty white clothes, dark haired and rather tallish.

"I'm puzzled," Yahiko commented. "Why do you think he helped us, Kaoru?"

"Because _he _saw us and told him," the woman answered with absolute determination. "There's no other explanation."

"Then… do you think he went to get him?" Tsubame ventured, almost afraid of getting it wrong. "That he is here now?"

"Here…" In spite of the turmoil of voices, the young waitress could hear Kaoru's musings. She felt so touched at her tone that she would have cried here and now. "He's here…"

Both pressed each other's hands again, and turned around to look anxiously at the stairs. Each second, each minute seemed an eternity, until, finally, among sailors and crew members who went down at an intermittent rate - the soldiers had disembarked already before they had arrived , Kaoru, Yahiko and Tsubame were able to distinguish the figure of the man who had helped them before, waving them a hand. With one of his arms, he was helping another, shorter figure, who seemed to have problems going down.

"Shinta!" Kaoru yelled all of a sudden. Both Tsubame and Yahiko were frozen at the unexpected strength, depth and desperation of the cry, so unlike everything that had come from the woman's mouth in years. It seemed as if it hadn't come from her mouth or from her throat at all, but rather from her insides, that had never ceased suffering for a single moment since the day he had left her.

"Hey! Kaoru… wait! He told us to…!" Yahiko tried in vain to hold her back. All those nights of weeping in silence were now back in a rush, tearing her entrails with a fierce, painful joy. Just as if she had turned into a madwoman, she rushed inside evading the police of the docks, and started to climb the stairs in her run, pushing everyone in her way and causing most sailors to look at her in astonishment. As soon as the first policeman recovered from the surprise, he started shouting for her to come back, and ran behind her with two of his companions.

"That ugly hag, always behaving like an immature, brutal, clumsy…!"Yahiko grumbled, unable to hide the emotion in his voice. Tsubame grabbed his arm in mild fright.

"Please, don't let her get into problems," she pleaded. He shrugged his shoulders, and took her hand in a calming gesture.

"When she's with him they won't bother her anymore," he told her. "You'll see."

Their eyes wandered then towards what was happening on the stairs, and, from the distance, they saw Kaoru finally reaching the man she loved. She fell on top of him, imprisoning his failing body in a long embrace while the sailors looked, and, as the police arrived where she was, she refused to pay them attention. For a moment, a row seemed about to start there, with the sailor who had come with Kenshin arguing with the cops and the rest of the people crowding around… but then someone started to cheer, and a chorus of many jestingly took the cue. Defeated, the policemen went down, and the sailors cheered thrice more.

"Oh, Kami-sama…," Tsubame muttered, the red now reaching the tip of her ears.

* * *

Kaoru did not see the people who stood in her way, not even heard the turmoil of voices growing behind her as she advanced madly towards the smiling figure in the middle of the stairs. She was surprised at herself, unable to understand her own behaviour, but she couldn't stop either. It was as if something had suddenly snapped, _broken _inside her when she had seen him, after the long lethargy of almost two years full of dark nights and tears. Maybe she had been dead all that time.

"Is that your wife?" she heard, and recognised at once the voice of the man who had helped her and the others to get that towards the ship, who was now holding her husband's arm. Kaoru stopped one last time to regain her breath, and to blink and check that what she saw was reality and not another of those tantalising dreams. But it was true, this time.

_Kenshin…no, Shinta was there_.

"Kaoru…dono," he muttered, letting the man go and walking towards her. He was drastically weakened since the last time she had seen him, so dishevelled and… washed away that the sight broke her heart. His eyes had a dizzy expression, and his step was cautious, as if he was afraid of falling down. Kaoru judged it had been ages since the last time he had changed his bandages, which were dirty with blood and reeked of putrefaction.

_Almost faded…_

Her sob of happiness was entwined with a shiver.

"Shinta…," she cried as she fell on top of him, and encircled his lean and weak frame with her arms. Sobbing now freely, she buried her head on that chest she had used as a pillow countless times, without minding the blood in her face or the smell that suffocated her and made her choke.

"Don't worry, Shinta, I'm here… I'm here now," she whispered gently, in a flow of words that she wasn't able to control or think before she uttered them. With slow but sure movements, she felt his arms gathering around her own back, pulling her closer, too. "You don't have to worry anymore. I'll… take care of you. You will see…"

"Uh, er…Lady, it's risky to do that," the sailor interrupted them. "You could… well, you know what I mean…"

"No," she replied vehemently. Her hands travelled again to Kenshin's, who was trying to disengage himself from her after the warning caused him to return to reality, and made them stay into place. Once more, she thought of the nights, the countless nights, the life escaping her and the oppressing secret behind the dark walls of her house. For him.

_For him alone._

"Lady, you aren't allowed to access this restricted zone!" a policeman barked from other side. Her only answer was to embrace her husband with even more strength, and shake her head again.

"No."

"Oh, come on, leave her alone!" the sailor argued." She's just met her husband!"

"But she can't get there! It's forbidden!"

"That man has spent more than a year in China doing diplomatic labour and then taking care of the wounded! And he's ill! I think he deserves to see his wife, now!"

"With all my respects for him and his work, he can see her a few metres further, behind that gate! She…"

Kaoru heard those voices far away, as if they were coming from the crowd that talked, sang and shouted in the distance. A sailor cheered merrily; a few voices answered among laughs. Suddenly, everyone who was next to them cheered at the same time, and the argument was definitely smothered under the weight of their shouts and hilarity.

The woman let Kenshin disengage himself from her grasp with gentleness, and then, for a moment, both gazed deeply into each other's eyes.

* * *

As soon as they saw the newly-reunited couple, together with the sailor, get close to the gate, Yahiko and Tsubame lost no time to walk towards them. Tsubame could easily perceive her husband's happiness while he got closer, but, when he looked closer at Kenshin, she saw the spark in his eyes dwindling a bit.

"Kenshin!" She remembered very well how, when they had met him for the first time, they had considered him the strongest swordsman in Japan. Now, of that walking legend, the only thing that remained was a feeble and sick man, pale and holding his wife's arm for support.

_And that blood…_

"Yahiko!" he acknowledged him, a big smile in his face. The young man got closer to where he was, and both greeted each other effusively. Then, Tsubame advanced herself with some shyness to do the same, and he looked equally glad to see her.

"So many things have happened while you were away!" Kaoru was telling him meanwhile. "See, for example, our little Tsubame-chan is pregnant!"

"Really?" The red-haired man opened his eyes in slow realisation, and nodded. "This… is good."

For a moment, it was so evident for her that the disease had made prey of his brain too that Tsubame couldn't help looking sombre. As she realised it, though, she felt ashamed and turned elsewhere, hoping that nobody had noticed.

"Two… two months," she muttered. "We… are very glad."

"And, by the way," Yahiko changed conversation quickly, as if to push away the black clouds that should not loom above them on such a joyful day." Can I ask you who are you, sir, so I may thank you for helping us?"

"Uh- Oh, yes…" The sailor gathered himself, and, coughing a bit, put up a dignified pose. "I'm second helmsman of this ship, Aoki Yujiro. That man saved my life during the trip, and I'm in debt with him. So I swore I would get him to any place he wanted once we arrived… and well, here we are."

"Saved your life? Kenshin….Shinta did?" Kaoru asked, searching for the eyes of her husband. The red haired man lowered them, and smiled.

"One night that I was on duty, there was a terrible storm, and a wave was just about to throw me overboard," the man explained, with a tone that was much less petulant now. "He grabbed my hand in the last moment, and saved my life."

"And that was…?" Yahiko asked, with a frown. Tsubame knew at once what he was thinking, and could not help but wonder about the same thing. The Kenshin who had performed that feat… could he be the one standing in front of them now?

_The will of living for others is the strongest thing in this world, _She suddenly remembered Yahiko telling her about Kenshin's words.

"Four days ago. After that, he got ill with a fever... and now he isn't quite in shape, as you see. Exactly like I told you, I took care of him, and as he told me he had family, I decided to find them. And I did!"

Tsubame sighed with some relief, glad to know that Kenshin's actual state was partly the fault of a fever… though almost at once her relief was evaporated. What was the difference? A man who was as sick as Kenshin-san would never ever regain any grain of health he had lost.

"I'm very thankful to you, Aoki-dono, for…" Here, Kenshin evidently hesitated, refusing to say the words _"taking care of me_" for everything. If there is something I can do…"

"Come to our house, please!" Kaoru's voice chimed in. "We will offer you meals and hospitality in exchange for your service."

But the man shook his head.

"I'm on duty now, too… and later I'm already engaged with my family, you know…" He began to play with his shirt with somewhat nervous movements, obviously awkward. "And, besides… I was doing that service because he saved my life, so it's all paid… right? See, I care very much for that oath…"

"What a pity…" Kaoru complained aloud. Each time that she heard her voice, Tsubame was more astonished at how she had returned to the seventeen-years-old Kaoru she once had met in only a morning. Maybe Yahiko had been completely right in his predictions, even in spite of the new grief at her husband's state… or maybe she was just acting to keep the illusion and spare them the pain of the obvious. If it was the latter, though, she was afraid that no fooling was possible under such evidences. "But I will give you the directions to find my house, and you will come one day or other to have dinner with us. Surely you can't deny me that…"

The man's uneasiness seemed now about to reach the sky.

"Well… if you insist, Himura-san…I… I already know where your house is, he told me while… well, while trying to do memory. We did that several times."

Now, Tsubame was sure that both Kaoru and Yahiko had cringed at those words. Only Kenshin stayed serene of all the people there… though with a serenity that was not completely deprived of a suspicious flavour of _unawareness._ She was starting to take the cue of his attitudes after the brief time they had been together: though at some moments of the conversation he looked bright, there were others when he sunk in a dark abyss of apathy.

Those months had been so devastating for him that now she was even starting to have anguishing doubts that he would ever be able to meet her child.

"Well," Yahiko was the first to recover from the general discouragement. "Why don't we go home together? You surely want to be home again, don't you, Kenshin?"

"Eh…yes." The older man nodded, pressing once more the arm of his companion of journey before letting him go definitely. At that moment, there was even more people gathered in the docks than before, though the small group of friends soon discovered that Kenshin's sight –and smell - granted them an immediate void wherever they went. People glanced sideways at him and yanked back, murmuring things, and the mothers took their children by their hands. Soon, they were in the road once more, among stands of the street vendors, the smell of the sweetmeats and the colourful arrays, which Kenshin regarded suspiciously, now and then shaking his head while Kaoru told him about every anecdote that came to her head at the moment.

"Kaoru-dono…" he asked, all of a sudden, stopping in the middle of the way. His wife and their friends followed his example at once, and turned a set of faces full of surprise towards him.

"Yes…Shinta?" she replied, both in solicitude and curiosity. "Is something the matter?"

The man looked elsewhere, losing his eyes among the multi-coloured crowd that surrounded them as if repentinely searching for something.

"Where is Kenji?" he asked, in a soft, anguished voice.

(to be continued)


	3. Chapter Two: Dusk

**Note: **In this chapter, Hiko will have a major role. But he isn´t manga Hiko…as you will see, he is purely Seissou Hen Hiko, withall the issues and mindset he had in his old age. Seissou Hen Hiko is OOC if seen synchronically to manga Hiko, but the perspective one has to adopt is a diachronical one…or doesn´t Seissou Hen happen many years after the manga?

As for how Kenshin got the disease…in "To Look Into Her Eyes", another story of mine, I more or less imply that through contact with open wounds of syphilitics in their last phase. But of course, we might never know…;)

Thanks to all who reviewed and to Margit for beta.

**Eclipse: Chapter Two**

**Dusk**

_(Kyoto)_

The young swordsman got into a careful, calculated battle stance. In a sequence of practiced movements, his sword went up and down fluidly, and the steel glistened in the air of the crimson dusk. A powerful yell broke the quiet last songs of the birds filling the branches of the nearby trees as he came down, crashing on a target, and reduced it to several pieces that fell scattered around his feet.

With an airy turn of the head, a pair of violet eyes fell upon him. In spite of the graceful pose he had adopted for landing, they looked fierce, menacing, as if they had just experienced a violent joy. Red strands of hair floated at the disorderly whim of the breeze, and he could not help but swallow at the sudden, deep resemblance.

_Idiot._

Almost in an impulse, he lifted the sake jar and took a long gulp. He could feel the eyes of the boy still fixed on him, but ignored them ostensibly… until, as he had foreseen, the exasperated voice reached his ears.

"Shishou!"

The old man took another long gulp, and only after that he deigned to turn his head towards him.

"What?" he grumbled.

Kenji sheathed his sword in a rather brusque movement.

"I _thought _you were looking at what you told me to do."

"There's a long difference between a sure grip and wasting all your arm strength in simply holding the sword. Your attack was about four times slower than what you would need in a true battle, and, of course, this would mean that your legs would give way in that sloppy landing pose if you chanced to do it correctly," he answered mechanically. "Not to speak about that ridiculous stance with your legs sprawled open. Are you training swordsmanship or sexual positioning?"

"Shishou!" Now, Kenji was red to the top of his ears. _Just like his father, _he couldn't help but think for a brief moment. "I'm trying! And the leg couldn't be wrongly positioned in more than two centimetres, anyway!"

"If you don't want to hear my opinion," Hiko cut him, "why do you ask me?"

The boy repressed a sigh of frustration at this, and the elder leaned back, though without allowing himself a smirk. Most of the times, he acted as if he couldn't see what Kenji wanted, annoying him immensely in the process, but the fact was that he knew. His decision about the whole issue had been taken long ago, and it wasn't going to change,

"Did I do it like him?" Kenji tried again, his previous irritability now reduced to a slightly insecure tone. Suddenly, Hiko felt tired of the whole game, of the same being repeated day after day, and of the damage that this foolish son of a fool was doing to himself at every moment. Sometimes it could be especially trying.

"Of course not," he said. "And you won't ever do it like him."

The boy's eyes widened in shock.

"What?" Under his tired glance, surprise turned to anger and this to barely concealed fear once more. "Why… do you say this?"

The thirteenth successor of the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu got up and grabbed his sake jar. His white mantle flopped with the evening breeze, just at the exact moment that the last ray of sun chose to disappear behind the immense blackness of the mountain peak.

"Because, idiot as he was, he wanted to learn swordsmanship for himself," he said, walking past a stunned Kenji in the direction of the river. "I want dinner in an hour."

* * *

As he had expected, he got no answer.

Hiko shook his head at the new remembrances, and took yet another gulp of sake. The riverside was starting to become his favourite dwelling place… and well, yes, he had to admit it, drinking sake was starting to become his favourite pastime. It might come with age, or with memories.

_"It's not my disease anymore, it's the disease of the whole world. Against that, no sword can do anything, except making the wound deeper. The Hiten Mitsurugi is dead."_

He still felt a deep melancholy in his soul whenever he remembered those ominous words, written by a person whose eyes had seen more horror, change and degradation than what he would ever see himself. Whose shoulder had already felt the frozen grip of death, even, calling for him, and who had smelt the scent of his own decay while writing those very lines. It was so sad to see how his stupid pupil had got that wise at the end of his life! In his previous idiocy, he had been a busy little redhead trying to prove that his Shishou´s pessimistic thoughts about the world and the new times were wrong in spite of all, and, not that he had ever given a grain of credibility to those attempts, but… it had been different. Now, it seemed to Hiko as if the only thing that remained to him was to witness the end of their world in calm apathy, and take care of the wrecks even if no one had really asked him to.

No, Kenshin had been careful not to mention a single word about Kenji to him before he had left. He knew that his master had currently a closer relationship with him than he himself, and to give him recommendations as to how he should deal with him was out of place. The only words he had heard from his lips regarding Kenji had been uttered years ago, and they had been a solemn plea that he never would teach the ougi to the boy… as always in his stupid pupil until maybe in the last months, all words that came without saying. The next month, as if he had needed yet more evidence, Kenji had arrived himself for the umpteenth time and started his ridiculous angry display, confirming him still more in his decision. Whenever he remembered the scene…well, he usually drank some more sake.

_"But why?" _

_Kenji was very angry. His slight thirteen-year-old frame had somehow stretched to look bigger and taller, and in his eyes there were sparks of fury dancing. He was out of himself, unable to think the words he was going to utter before putting them in his mouth._

_"You must have known. Oh, yes, you should have known! But…but…but you taught it to him, and now he's dying!"_

_"The disease your father has isn't exactly transmitted through swordsmanship." Hiko pointed out. He had to bring some sense back to the conversation before doing anything else, even cruelly. "Unless in a very loose sense of the term."_

_Now, the boy looked about to explode. If it had been any other situation, Hiko would have amused himself wondering whether the shrimp would try to attack him, the strongest, quickest and most skilled warrior walking the face of Earth in spite of his good fifty-eight years…but the truth was that he was feeling the issue piercing his innards in a way that the stupid boy wouldn't ever be able to imagine._

Maybe it was good that he didn't.

_"He contracted that disease because he was weak! Because his body was broken and he couldn't help people with his sword anymore, and had to help them in other ways! Because he learned the Ama Kakeru Ryu no Hirameki!"_

_"Ignorant fool." _

_Kenji´s face glowered in outrage._

_"What?"_

_"My duty was to put that power at his disposition. It was he, as an adult, who had to make his own decisions and choose whether to use it correctly or not. Don't you understand?" His voice was slightly lifted, but not much. After all, he had already got used to his life being some kind of succession of red-haired crybabies ungratefully misunderstanding everything he did or said. "And, be sure of one thing: if I hadn't taught him that, you would never have been born!"_

_"Why, really? And is **this **so much better?"_

_"Oh, I don't know." Hiko shrugged his shoulders, and gave a last look full of seriousness to the seething boy. "That´s for **you** to prove, in any case."_

It was not that he disliked the boy. In fact, he had liked him since the first time that he had seen him, a baby that amused him and drove his parents mad with his habitude of climbing up the dojo roof. Later, when he grow up, the boy's natural talent, skills and brightness had led to his decision to teach him some things, if as an occupation for his body and mind rather than as formal training to become a warrior –just by watching a "training session" for five minutes, his older pupil would have understood clearly that Hiko's plans on the boy were much different, though Kenji had remarkably failed to understand this. When Kenshin had left for China, he had appeared once more in the mountain, determined not to go down again until he had become a Mitsurugi master; and, while a part of him only wished to send him back because both fools amply deserved each other, in the end he took pity on them and allowed him to stay. Maybe Kenshin had behaved like an idiot during all his life, but even Hiko had to admit that he had tried his utmost to stand consequently, in his own _very _weird way, by his teachings… and now, because of this, he was in a state where it simply wasn't honourable to refuse him any kind of direct or indirect help. As for the impatient, loud voiced brat, at least _part_ of his rage towards his father and the whole situation did not fail to have a point, and Hiko had thought that a bit of hard thinking could only do him good; not to speak about the fact that he was starting to be a bit too old to handle red-haired misguided walking threats as to help create one more.

Oh, would he _ever_ get a bit of rest from that tiresome family?

"Hiko-shishou…"

Irritated at the interruption, the old man turned his head. His new pupil was standing in the darkness, his eyes fixed at the reflections of the stars in the calm water. There was nothing of his earlier arrogance left in him anymore, and Hiko guessed that it was some kind of time for conversation.

"I thought I had made myself clear when I told you I didn't want you disrupting my peace here," he growled.

"Sorry, Shishou," Kenji answered, without even budging. The Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu´s last sucessor repressed a sigh of resignation.

"Sit down then," he said, pointing at a rock beside his. Kenji took his cue quickly, but then stayed looking at the reflections in silence for a long while.

"And…?" Hiko asked about five minutes later.

The boy swallowed with a slight noise.

"Well..."he started. "I… I was wondering about what you said earlier. About my… him, and our swordsmanship."

"Aha," the old man nodded. He wouldn't make it even a little bit easier for him, that went without saying.

"I… would wish to know what did you mean with that of learning swordsmanship for himself. What am I doing, then? I'm trying my hardest, Shishou …"

"You don't have to whine to me," he cut him brusquely. "I know. But I know also _why _you're doing so, and it isn't because you like, want or need the swordsmanship."

"But of c…!" Halfway of starting a whiny quarrel again, the boy seemed to think the better of it, and closed his mouth. Maybe he was maturing, after all… "Then why would I do what I'm doing? That's absurd!"

"You're doing what you're doing because you're stupid." Hiko answered. Kenji´s scowl deepened, but, like his father, he was already used to being insulted at each hour of the day. "In other words; you're striving to follow the most grievous and hard path of life just because your father doesn't care for you. That's childish."

"What?" The boy got up fulminantly, trying to form words that choked in rage inside his throat. Hiko could sense hurt and aggression coming in loads from his ki, almost at the same level as that other day years ago.

"As I told you. Your whole training has no purpose except constant comparison with the training of your father. You do not dare to confront him directly, so you try to do it through something you both shared; and, in the end, you know you can't even use it to fight him, for he can't hold a sword anymore. Unless you're stupid enough as to believe that to know you're better than him will frustrate him, only an option occurs to me, and it's that you simply need his approval. Am I wrong?"

"O….of course you are!" Kenji seethed. "I … I don't need anything from him. That's what I want to prove! I can do everything that… he did."

Noticing the slip of his tongue in the last moment, the young swordsman tried to lower his voice at the end of the sentence, and his last words came as a nearly inaudible whisper.

_Too late_.

"It was a rhetoric question," Hiko explained coolly. "You really don't need to shout your support for my theory. Whatever you do, whatever you learn, whatever you achieve, you only see your father. Sheesh. When I met him and started to train him he was only eight, but he was already much more of an adult than what you are. That's why I agreed to train him in the first place. "

"An adult?" Somewhat recovered from his fit, Kenji let a hollow laugh escape his mouth. "Leaving his home and country at forty-four, deathly ill, to try putting peace in an international conflict entirely of his own?"

"When I met him, he had buried dozens of corpses alone, with his own hands. _That _was what he saw when he learned kenjutsu." The words came from Hiko´s lips in such a strange and unusual tone that Kenji could not help but gasp. "And that was also what he saw when he left for China last year."

Silence fell over both with a heavy, almost unbearable weight. A group of clouds pushed by the breeze veiled the crescent moon, and both their glances were unconsciously directed at its dwindling reflection in the river waters.

"Well…," Hiko said at last, getting up and dusting up his mantle. "You have made supper, haven't you?"

"Yes," Kenji answered in a gloomy voice, as he followed his example. Hiko could hear his steps following him in the dark of the night. "But, Hiko-shishou…"

"Yes?"

The boy´s difficulty at pronouncing the next words was evident.

"Are you… going to let me stay?"

The Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu´s thirteenth successor swallowed, and did a great effort to hide his gloomy mood behind one of his usual sarcastic smirks. He definitely did not feel like it now, but it was to him that the last word of that conversation belonged.

"If you really want to go, the road to Kyoto is in that direction."

After all, the next day, he supposed as he continued his way towards his cottage, they wouldn't talk about this anymore. Kenji would spend a terrible night, that was granted, but it wasn't as if he didn't deserve it, anyway.

_The Hiten Mitsurugi is dead._

For a moment of special pessimism, Hiko could not help but wonder if Kenshin´s words would cease haunting him one day.

* * *

_(Tokyo)_

Kaoru gave a deep breath, and crossed the threshold of her bedroom to join Yahiko and Tsubame. As she brushed her eyes, pretending she was brushing her forehead, the smile appeared on her features once more as if by the effect of magic.

"He's asleep," she announced with a gentle whisper. The couple looked into each other's eyes with some sadness, and Yahiko nodded back. In a furtive peer through the half-open shoji, Tsubame could distinguish Kenshin lying in his bed, his frail body curled in a ball as if trying to protect himself instinctively against some vague threat that floated in the air, and felt her soul sinking again to her feet.

"Poor Ken….I mean, Shinta-san," she whispered back. "So tired from the journey, the fever, and then… the bandages. I hope he takes a good rest now."

"He will be far better tomorrow," Kaoru shrugged her shoulders hopefully. "Maybe, who knows? we could go celebrate his arrival then."

"That would be a good idea," Yahiko nodded. "Well, Tsubame... I think we should be going now, shouldn't we? It's almost dark by now."

The young woman did not acquiesce immediately, but threw a significant glance in Kaoru's direction.

"Do you… well, do you mind, Kaoru-san?"

"Of course not!" the adressed one smiled. "I'm not alone anymore, Tsubame-chan. I'm… feeling better."

"You don't know how glad I am, then," the young woman answered, still not so sure. Bowing deeply, she walked in a hesitating step until he was side to side with Yahiko at the door of the courtyard. "I'll come tomorrow evening; I have to work for the rest of the day. I am sorry."

"Oh! I was forgetting," As they were already stepping outside, Yahiko turned back once more. "fter these four days of holidays, I'll take care of the lessons for a while. Whatever you say."

For a moment, Tsubame thought she was able to see some of the woman's sorrow surfacing in the glow of her eyes. Slowly, she bowed back, and sent Yahiko a grateful glance.

"Thank you, Yahiko," she muttered in a subdued, soft voice. "Thank you very much."

"Yahiko…," Tsubame's voice rose again, in worry, as soon as they had left the lights of the house and the exhausted couple behind. "Do you think…?"

"They will be alright," he interrupted her with his usual determination. Still, Tsubame was able to notice, his voice lacked the enthusiasm he had displayed only this morning. It was as if… it failed him, somehow. "At least for a while."

"But, it was terrible," she insisted. "When we were taking those… those bandages away…"

Tsubame was sure she would have nightmares about that in the days to come. After bathing Kenshin in hot water for a while, they had had to start peeling the wrappings off those horrible open wounds, and she did not think she had ever witnessed anything so gut-wrenching. Whenever she remembered his ghostly pallor, trying to suppress the cries…

"Poor Shinta-san," she said, as if it was a litany that drove her bad remembrances away. "By the way, Yahiko… do you know why Kaoru calls him like this now?"

"I heard from her that it had been his name as a child. It's strange… I had never imagined him as a peasant child who could have such a name. I always saw him as a warrior… But, Tsubame," Husband and wife entered a fairly crowded street, and the far away music and chants of the people who were still at the main avenues reached their ears from the distance. The woman looked in his direction; he was pensive, maybe brooding over something.

"Yes?"

"Can you write a letter to Megumi tomorrow?"

"Megumi-san?" The woman's eyes widened in surprise at first, though slowly she began to understand. "I see… He needs a doctor that can arrive sooner, but Megumi… she _needs _to be here. I will write to her this same night, and send it tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay. Thank you. As for Kenji…"

Yahiko's voice faded off in mid-sentence, as if he was thinking deeply before he continued it. Tsubame could not help but agree with him in that subject; Kenji was a great problem indeed. He had left Tokyo to live with Hiko more or less at the time of Kenshin's departure, and they hadn't got any news about him yet. He was enraged at his father, and did not want to have anything to do with him since he had left, that was all they knew… but now, they also knew that Kenshin had already asked five times about his whereabouts during a single day. Each time had been more painful than the previous, especially for Kaoru, who didn't want to lie to him or tell him the truth and had given different evasive answers. Kenji might have his reasons, Tsubame thought, but he definitely should be aware of what he was putting his mother through. As well as of the anguish in his father's eyes whenever he looked around and inquired where he was.

"He should come here as soon as possible," she exclaimed, with an unusual strength in her tone. "His temper tantrum has lasted more than enough. Should I write to him too?"

"No." The young samurai shook his head, and stretched an arm to touch her shoulder. "You don't need to. I will go to Kyoto myself."

* * *

When Kaoru woke up the next morning, the first thing she felt was a soft, intermittent tugging at her arm. Slowly returning to consciousness, she opened her eyes, and her heart almost gave a leap when she saw the figure that was lying in front of her.

"Ken… Shinta…," she muttered, half asleep. There were so many things she would have to get used to…

The flower essence she had used the previous night on him to palliate his stench was now mingled again with the scent of the blood that had seeped through the bandages during the night, but fortunately it was still a fresh, somewhat acrid smell. He looked feverish, though much better after having been able to rest in good conditions.

His hands were holding her right arm, and his face contorted in an expression of the deepest pain.

"Shinta? Is something the ma…oh!"

Kaoru suppressed a gasp as she saw him staring at the rashes on her arm´s skin, and, seized by a sudden incomprehensible feeling of shame, she retired it and hid it behind her back. Even ill, nothing escaped his prying glance.

"Do…do you remember?" she tried to explain. Her heart started to beat quickly, and her face got warm and red. "The last night we spent together, a year ago… I… I begged of you to let me share your burden. You accepted, and we… slept together that night. Do you remember now?"

"I…" The skin in his forehead was furrowed even more as he thought hard, and Kaoru could not help feeling a surge of compassion.

"But why?" he asked, in a miserable voice. "Why would you..? Why? It's… horrible. You don't know…"

_Why?_

Only a year ago, she thought then, he had seemed to have understood her motivations enough. But… she realised it once more as she gazed at the decaying, pale and wrinkled form of the once strong swordsman she had married, and especially at the veil of impotent oblivion in his feverish eyes, things had changed too much. How could she have told him now, let him know that she had done it because she could not stand that once she had reached behind the eyes of the ex-hitokiri he had set yet another unsurmontable barrier between her and him? That she suffered knowing that he had stepped into a different world of understandings, perceptions and sensations where she couldn't follow him, and that she was condemned once more to stay aside oblivious of everything, the eternal little girl who couldn't and shouldn't understand?

_That she had destroyed herself because she could not bear anymore not to be able to look into his eyes? _

"Shinta…," She crawled on the bed towards him, and kissed his forehead with a smile. "Shinta, you idiot! I want to be next to you and take good care of you. How could I if I had to be afraid of you? Rest… I'm in care now. You're no longer in China, but at home with your wife."

"China…" The sick man pronounced that word with deliberate slowness, and repressed a wince, as if trying to throw away bad reminiscences. Having read his last letters, Kaoru was able to imagine what was coming to his mind, and she had to take a frustrated intake of breath. How could she ever achieve to be one with him, if whatever she did he always had lived terrible experiences she could not share?

"You're back," she insisted, caressing his cheek. "You did what you could, with your utmost forces. Now, you don't have to do anything else anymore. Leave the world alone with its troubles…you're free now. You have atoned…"

"No."

The woman's mouth and hands froze in astonishment, and she had to look several times at him to confirm that it had really been him who had spoken. At her mention of atonement, it was as if the haze in his mind had settled in a second, and his eyes had regained their sharp glance. Above all, his voice… it had sounded as firm and clear as it had been years ago.

"Shinta?"

"I haven't."

Instinctively, her eyes turned then towards the spot she had been caressing with her right hand; which happened to be his left cheek. In the pale and spoiled skin there was the mark of an old wound, almost faded away at the edges but strangely brilliant in the middle. It was still there, as the shadow of an ominous ghost giving a warning.

_Cross-shaped._

"But how?" she wondered, her outrage at the incomprehensible injustice of the spirits causing her to lift her voice. "How can it be?"

Kenshin lowered his eyes, and sighed. For a moment, he seemed about to answer her something, but soon his glance was clouded again.

_So much suffering…_

"Can you… can you ask Kenji to come?" he asked, weakly. "I can't get up…"

(to be continued)


	4. Chapter Three: Love and Death

**Note: **This should start the heavy tragedy, I suppose. J Thanks very much to all the people who reviewed the previous chapters.

**Cross-Shaped Pain**

**Chapter Three: Love And Death**

_(Tokyo)_

"Kaoru-dono… are you all right?"

The woman grasped the old wooden plank of the kitchen shoji with desperate determination, until she saw her knuckles turn white. She had to close her eyes, she told herself. Close them for a while… if she did, it would pass.

"Yes, Shinta. Of course I'm all right!" she lied, as she succeeded in smothering the pain and the nausea after some brief instants of agony. Glad to see that the floor did not rise to meet her sight anymore, she felt herself starting to return to her usual self little by little. "But you shouldn't be wandering around the house so much. Today is a beautiful day, why don't you sit outside for a while?"

"I am worried," he insisted. Suppressing a sigh, a pale and tired Kaoru turned towards him, and offered him an arm for support that he refused. "I… can walk alone."

Since he had fairly recovered from the feverish state he had been in when he had arrived, his curiosity about her and her situation had done nothing but increase. Whenever she felt like having a breakdown, like now, he was there watching her, and when he woke up in the morning, he usually took her arm away, and stared at her ugly rashes with an inscrutable glance until he fell into a doze again. Fortunately, at least his relative clarity of mind had brought back to him some fleeting remembrances about the why and when of the incident, but they came and went at the most unsuspected moments. The other day, for example, while he caressed her arm in bed, he had stared at her with doleful eyes, and she had heard him whispering in a soft tone that it was not worth the pain.

"Of course it is!" she had answered with a smile. "For me, it is. No one is going to make me regret my decision for a single moment, not even you!"

And, relatively, it had been the truth. If there was something in the world thatshe knew, Kaoru would not regret it _anymore. _While Kenshin and her walked into the porch of the house, and she helped him to sit down at his favourite place under the sun, she could not help but revive once more the remembrances of those dark days… (no, nights, for the suffering had come always at night), when the first wound had broken in, and she had been alone in her big house. She remembered herself staring at it with the same obsessive glance that she could see sometimes in Kenshin now, cradling the slowly growing thing for all night long. She remembered her nightmares, in which she died before being able to see Kenshin again, and how then he always returned and found her lying in her grave. Her forces had finally left her because of a sudden weakness and a terrible lack of sleep, and everybody had started wondering about her, worrying, _fretting_ over her, while the only thing she could do was to withdraw from them and dread their discovery. She wouldn't have stood the look in their faces. She wouldn't have stood to see Kenji… to let him know what she had done to him, that she had deserted him too, and seethe at the unfairness of the situation because she knew he would blame his father all the same for this. She remembered herself crying every night, in pain and shame, for weeks. And then… she also remembered the heartfelt laugh that had come afterwards.

_I want to share your pain. Please, let me share your pain…_

Until now, she had probably been unable to understand even for a moment what that word really meant. She had felt grief when her mother died, when her father died, when Kenshin left her to go to Kyoto, or when Yahiko had told her that Kenshin had contracted a deadly disease. But _pain_… that had been nothing else than the name of a phantasmagorical barrier which did not allow her to reach the man she loved. It had isolated him from everyone else, even from her, and whenever she saw _it _in his eyes while his mouth was smiling she felt like aching in frustration. As he had said shortly after they met, her beliefs were those of a person who had never had to kill. Killing, _murdering_ hundreds of people in cold blood, causing the death of the person she loved the most, developing a cold, unfeeling mask that ended up battling to usurp her true feelings in a war that pushed her to the brink of insanity, being alone for years and years, followed by remorse and the hatred of people wherever she went… she had never felt anything like that. And because of this, she did not deserve the naked, sincere glance he granted to the men who had fought in the Bakumatsu, or that, she was sure, he had given to the woman who had seen him kill, that night when both had lain in each other's arms next to the fireside the nigh before she had died for him . All that the little girl deserved was those clouded eyes, and that gentle but false smile. She had lived for years and years with this… until she had been able to change the situation.

Now, effectively, since this had happened to her, Kaoru had come to know what secret nightmares were. She had felt the overpowering shame, the need to hide her suffering. The guilt was hers now, as well as the empty smiles and the glassy eyes, and the suffocating loneliness that came with the knowledge that nobody understood her and that nobody _should. _Since she had embraced living Death in her own bed one night as he had embraced it every day in the hospitals of the syphilitics, she had learned what pain was, and torn down all the barriers.

_She was the one who understood him now, better than anyone._

"Are you…leaving?" he asked, trying to ask the question with an even tone. Still, Kaoru was able to perceive the disappointment in it, and, with care not to perform a brusque action, she knelt at his side.

"I'm going to wash the dishes and take care of the house, but I promise I won't be long. Then, I will come here, and we'll sit together under the sun, okay?"

"All right," he nodded, resignedly . "But… be careful."

"Oh, but that's incredible!" she exclaimed in mock exasperation. "After such a long trip, you come back with exactly the same attitude? I don't know what I'm going to do with you, Himura Kenshin…"

The man lowered his head, and laughed softly at her words. Kaoru smiled too, and turned to get back inside after pecking him in the cheek where the cross-shaped faint signal still persisted. She hated to leave him alone for a long time. She had to because there were things that needed to be done, but still, each fifteen minutes or so she would take care of returning to watch him and give him a bit of conversation, so he wouldn't start to revive horrors once more and curse at his impotence. The events in China had affected him so much that his brain would have had to be entirely lost in order to forget the things he had told her in his letters from the continent. Even in the middle of his fever, she had caught him several times muttering words in Chinese, and when she had confessed herself puzzled at his acquisition, so late in his life, of a foreign and difficult language when he had never known anything but Japanese until then, he had given her an indescribable glance, and had whispered that he couldn't trust an interpreter.

That was how she had reached the knowledge that atonement was impossible until he died. She was aware that he considered himself indirectly responsible of what had happened on the continent, because he had fought in the Bakumatsu to build the state of things that had made the China horror possible, and had even written to her that while his murders kept multiplying and producing other murders he wouldn't be able to rest in peace unless Death forced complete oblivion upon him. When he had returned and she had seen the cross-shaped scar still lingering there, she only had needed to put two and two together.

The woman shook her head sadly at those thoughts, and began to carry the bowls she hadn't been able to pick up before. When Megumi arrived, it would be horribly rude to ask her to do that, but she needed help to clean the house. Dirt would start eating them very soon if she didn't get to it… and she felt so weak…

_What a pair of warriors! _she could not help but think ironically, throwing the dishes in the water. _Two in a house, and unable to help themselves._

She was looking forward to see Megumi, to have her in the house, even if she would have to tell her what had happened. After all, they were both connected by a strong link that would allow the doctor in the end to understand her attitude and her feelings like no one else could, as shocked as she would feel at first. Both of them loved Kenshin, and both had always wished to be the ones to share his burden.

A wholly different thing, though, would be Yahiko's arrival with Kenji, if he managed to convince him to leave Kyoto. Kaoru dreaded this more than anything else in the world, and felt the sharpest pangs of guilt rolling inside her stomach whenever she thought of it. What if, just because of her doings, her son never forgave his father while the latter was alive? What if he…?

The woman put the bowl she had just washed on top of the others, and froze as she felt the nausea creeping up inside her once more. No. Not again… Tsubame had said that she would come…

She was glad she still had Tae and Tsubame around, coming to help her and give her conversation whenever they could, but unfortunately they couldn't leave their work places too often. Yahiko hadn't come back when he had said he would, either, and the dojo was closed now. Her father wouldn't be too proud…

The water glowed with an unnatural light in front of her eyes, just before a sharp pang distorted her view. Suppressing a scream that could alert Kenshin about what was happening to her, Kaoru tried to reach for a safe handle, but felt her hands slipping away in the wetness, towards the void.

As she came down, unable to prevent her fall, the last thing she heard was a voice calling her name.

* * *

"Are you sure?"

Tsubame gave a sharp intake of breath, and lost her glance on the carriage that hurried down the usually quiet street they were crossing. Somehow, she had always found it impossible to keep people's glances when they were talking about serious things, and Megumi's right now was too piercing in its shock.

"I… Tae-san and I have talked about it often. We're almost sure. There's… _something _bad going on with Kaoru-san."

The older woman sighed in frustration.

"But what kind of _something_? A disease? Or she's just affected by poor Ken-san's state?"

"I hope it isn't a disease...," Tsubame said heartily, doing nothing but increase Megumi's impatience. She had been already too crushed at the news of Kenshin's terminal state when she had taken the train to rush to Tokyo. What had she done now, to deserve that new sinister guessing game? "But she doesn't talk about it, and somehow we don't dare to bring the subject up. She's so… distant. We thought you were the only one who could know and, as I had already written the letter to you…"

"I see." _Professionality, Megumi, professionality…_ "Well, I'm here, if this is what you were expecting," she said with a brief smile. "And, whether they want me there or not, I'm going to bring some order into that house."

Tsubame smiled back, though her smile was brief, too, as Megumi could observe.

"I'm very glad that you have come. Somehow I... well, I cannot help but believe that things will get different with you here. It's a sensation."

"And not a too surprising one, after I've been always the one to knock some sense inside that little girl," the doctor snorted airily. "I'm still every inch as ready to do so."

The younger woman blushed, and shook her head.

"I… don't think you will be able to do anything like what you did the day Kenshin-san left for Kyoto. She has changed so… uh?"

All of a sudden, as she was talking, her words got caught in her throat, and her feet froze in place. Megumi turned towards her, astonished at her attitude.

"What's the matter, Tsubame-chan? Have you… seen…?"

But then she saw it, too, and her question died on her lips. In front of them, twenty or thirty metres away from where they were, a red-haired man was resting exhaustedly, with his back against a tree. His chest was heaving up and down from exertion, but his worried eyes did not cease darting in every direction, apparently in desperate search of something or someone.

"Ken-san!" the doctor cried, running towards him. Equally agitated, Tsubame followed her, and in a mutual effort, the two women were able to hold him and support his tired body. Blood was oozing from his wounds, and staining his fresh bandages. "What has happened? What's the matter?

"Me… Megumi?" he asked in disbelief. As he recognized her features, his eyes widened with urgency. "Megumi-dono… you have to help Kaoru-dono! Quick! She is… she is… she needs you!"

Unable to hear anything else, the woman left Kenshin in Tsubame's care, and threw everything except her medical bag to the ground. Then, hearing a strange sound whistling in her ears, she took a long, avid breath, and started a mad run towards the house.

* * *

_Had she arrived too late?_

An ominous silence hovered over the house when Megumi arrived and got inside through the open shoji. The kitchen was in a dreadful state of disarrangement, with dishes floating in the sink, a lot of things thrown in haste on the floor – by Kenshin, no doubt, in his mad search for bandages, remedies or whatnot - and the table still dirty from that morning's breakfast. Crossing all this quickly, she hurried into Kaoru's and Kenshin's bedroom by a shoji that had also been left open.

_Damn, _she cursed to herself as she saw the state of the woman who was lying there. She was pale and unconscious, and when she knelt at her side and took her hand in her own she could feel it was burning with fever. Reconstructing what had happened, she dared to venture that Kenshin had carried his wife to the bed after she had fainted, put a wet cloth on her forehead, covered her with a blanket so she wouldn't be cold while the fever advanced, and then, maybe aware that he wasn't able to take care of her reliably anymore - and how painful this should have felt to him- he had opted to go out and ask the first passer-by for help. Stupid girl, she had obviously lost no time in catching the fever he had brought from China. Precautions were something that did not exist in her vocabulary….

_The fever is not too high, but it will rise in the next hours. The only thing that can be done is to help to hold it in check, _she calculated, rising to prepare the adequate medicine for the situation. Before she left, though, she took her patient's hands to put them under the blanket once more, to prevent her from getting cold….

_Uh? What's this?_

Megumi froze, and knelt again to look closer at the strange red spot she had seen by chance in Kaoru's hand. Could her hand be bleeding? Carefully, she folded the sleeve of her kimono up… and the spectacle that was exposed in front of her eyes made her cringe.

_Wh… What? No! Come on, it cannot be. She can't be so stupid…She can't be so…_

Still, what she saw was dreadfully true; the whole arm was covered with the same rashes she had seen on Kenshin's years ago. Her heart refused to believe it, but her medical insight was already making the diagnosis as she stayed there trembling like a leaf. That was syphilis. Syphilis, acquired sexually from Ken-san before the latter left for China. It couldn't be anything else.

And now, the question. Could there have been an accident that nobody knew about? No, her mind answered itself, Kenshin would never have been so careless in anything regarding Kaoru. Half-dead as he was, he had been perfectly capable of rushing to find help when she had fainted. But, if not like that... then… how…?

"What have you done?" she could not help but exclaim aloud, too overwhelmed to get up or do anything else even if the occasion obviously required it. Kaoru's body stirred up at her words, and her eyes slowly began to open in confusion.

"Where am I?" she asked, instinctively trying to push the cover aside. "Shinta…"

"It's me," Megumi informed her in a curt voice. "Leave the blanket in place."

"Me… Megumi-san?" The haze in Kaoru's expression seemed to evaporate in nothing more than a second. "You…?"

"Yes, me," she answered. The younger woman noticed then that the rashes in her arms were exposed, and quickly pulled the sleeve of her kimono over them again, her cheeks reddening in shame. As if she could fool her….

"Please, tell me how this came to pass," Megumi asked in the most patient voice she was able to muster. Kaoru nodded weakly, but then lost her glance in the distance and stayed silent. The doctor's composure was waning in a question of seconds.

"Today, please."

"I…" The sick woman swallowed in resignation, and tried to smile. "I got it willingly. I begged it of him before he left, and he… he gave it to me."

"What?" Megumi gasped. She could not believe what she had heard.

"I was tired to be the little girl who couldn't understand him. I wanted to suffer with him… to share his burden," Kaoru continued, encouraged at the older woman's loss of words. "I wanted to prove to you all and to myself that I could. That I could be... his partner."

Megumi lowered her head and got up slowly, with a mumble that told her patient that she was going to prepare her medicine. She had the terrible feeling that the meaning of Kaoru's words hadn't been able to reach her mind fully yet, but what she had understood was shattering it already.

"Am I… I can't be dying yet, can I, Megumi-san?"

"Don't you dare joking with death!" the doctor exploded at last, in an unexpected fit of uncontrolled anger. "Is the joke not funny enough for you yet? You… you have wrecked your life for all the years to come in a childish tantrum and you still want to laugh a bit more? You will laugh enough, indeed you will, when you find yourself covered with putrid wounds!"

In spite of her present weakness, Kaoru did not flinch at those hard words. Laying her head on the pillow, she looked up towards the other woman, and pierced her with her adamant eyes.

"I'm not joking with death, Megumi-san. I'm _serious. _Do you know what I promised after the Jinchuu nightmare? I promised I would learn to understand him, and share his guilt and his pain as if I was a part of him. After this vow, he wandered through Japan atoning, and I stayed at home and took care of our child. He contracted syphilis…" Her voice broke slightly at that word, but soon returned again with even more force, almost as a shout. "He was dying, Megumi! Should I have left him alone in this, put him in a room and hide him, refuse to embrace him in fear he would pollute me, or remain at a cautious distance? From _him, _who had not hesitated to get close to those who were suffering and share their pain! Could I do that? And what about my promise? I promised I would never… leave him alone…"

The effort was too much for her, and she wavered. Before Megumi could get to her, her eyes had closed again, and she fell unconscious once more. The doctor arranged the covers over her with mechanical care, and left the room to prepare the medicine.

"Megumi-san!" Tsubame cried from the entrance. Kenshin was strangely calm, leaning on her, as if she had known since he had seen Megumi rush in there that nothing could go wrong anymore. "How is Kaoru-san doing?"

"She has contracted the fever, too," she announced, in the most professionally cool of tones. "As she was a bit… weakened for several reasons, it made prey on her and it will take some days to drive it away. But it's all under control." _Yes, you still have plenty of years to go on, you wretched thing. And I know that in all that time you will never, ever question…_ "I'm going to prepare a medicine for her."

"Thank you, Megumi-dono," Kenshin said with a grateful smile. He had circles under his eyes, she noticed now, and creases on his brow and all his face. He wasn't forty-six yet, but he had already turned into a small, frail old man.

"Don't thank me yet," she frowned threateningly. "Next, I will get started with _you_!"

When she entered the messy kitchen again, the woman spilled the contents of her medical bag on the table like an automat, and knelt to search for the item she needed at the moment. As much as she tried, though, she wasn't able to spot it, for her whole vision was blurred with tears.

"Oh, Kami-sama, Kami-sama…," she whispered between sobs. "I didn't… I… I only told you to smile for him!"

For a long while, she wasn't able to do anything else than to stay there, repeating those words over and over as if they were a litany she had to cling to in order to stay sane.

* * *

_(Kyoto)_

_"I will come back to your mother and to you, and I'll be with you when you come of age, so you can decide."_

Liar.

Kenji gave a strong yell, and lowered his blade to strike repeated times. Considering that he had not been able to sleep for several nights, the strength he put in his exercises was astonishing, but the reason was purely, simply, that he needed something to _strike. _Hiko knew it, too, and had renounced to make any comments about the fact except a dismissive shrug of his shoulders before he had gone to do some pottery and had left him alone with his "training", or, more accurately, with his demons. And, for once, Kenji had not cared at all.

The young man made a short pause and wiped the sweat away from his forehead. Why did everything have to be so unfair? It was not only that nobody supported his views or agreed with him; no one _understood_ him even, leave alone his grievances. They all took his father's side unanimously before even asking what had happened; Yahiko, Tsubame, his mother, Hiko… But what was so darn outrageous about his feelings? He had simply wanted to have his father around for him and for his mother, hadn't he? He had accepted his reasons, and waited for the day on which he had promised him he would decide, only to be fooled once again, and for that he was the spoiled brat, and the one who was in the wrong and did not want to understand.

In the wrong. Hah! Technically, it was his father who had been in the wrong with his unfulfilled promise. What kind of lawyer would deny this? And that was actually _nothing_; the extended belief that he did not _want _to understand made him even angrier. In his opinion, whoever thought this was either short-sighted or a monster. How many explanations he had, not accepted, but eagerly expected, eagerly _swallowed_, forcing himself to trust them as if they were his only board of salvation? After his father had contracted his disease – something he had _never, _ever blamed on him, by all kami's sake- he had waited more anxiously than ever, hoping he would get his occasion to decide about their family life one day, make his father live with them and spend the rest of his life at home, with his mother and him, and, and…

_…He had promised…_

Kenji shook his head furiously, and wiped his face again with his hand, this time in order to wash the tears away. He was glad that Hiko was not in sight, but one could never be sure…

_Calm yourself. Stop trembling. Concentrate on acting cool and composed, like an adult…_

But how could he, if they did not allow him to? They said that he was a spoiled brat because he was not resigned to let everything happen, like his mother. Because he wanted to have his father at home before he died, and had strongly about his shattered home. According to them, brief, he was spoiled because he _fought back_. What could he do against such an arbitrary judgement, except getting all mad over it and proving their theories right?

During the time he had spent in Hiko's house, the young man had reached little by little the depressing conclusion he had not dared to reach when he had been at home: His whole life was a failed experiment, if not an accident. His parents could actually not afford the luxury of having children, he bent on his atonement and she bent on him, but somehow they had had _him. _Therefore, he had been born to be the eternal hindrance who should at least have the decency of letting things happen as if he was not there, without demanding attention on his own. But he was not as good. He was human. And he loved his father as every other son of a human would.

Tears started to gather in his eyes once more, and this time he let them flow for a while before trying to quench them at all. It was hard enough to start having those thoughts in the middle of the night, with that damned old man sleeping next to him and giving the damn correct interpretation to each one of his movements and ways of breathing. He was alone now, and he wanted to use that privilege to wallow in self-pity in peace. The moment he would be with someone, he would already have his ears bursting with all those stories about how strong and consequent his father was. They were all fascinated with him somehow, even Hiko, who called him idiot. He only had to smile, and everybody forgot his flaws. Kenji understood that he was so obsessed with atoning himself and not resting until he believed he had done enough; if he had left the judgement of that rest on the others he would have been acquitted in five minutes. No wonder he felt so frustrated.

Still, not even all these things managed to cloud his perception of the most important issue of all, namely, that if this had happened only to the other people he felt bitter with, he would not have been so angry and hurting in the first place. The problem was that his father had done _it _to him, too. How could he blame people for being partial towards his father, if he had been so partial himself? The description fitted him too, and for that he was every inch as childish as Hiko had said: whenever his father smiled to him, he forgot all his absences, all the weeks he had stolen from his mother and him when he had arrived late, all his excuses, everything. If his father tried to convince him of anything, be it that he wouldn't do a thing again or that he loved him, he always could have his way easily. He couldn't help it… and it was so frustrating! That was part of the reason why he had fled from Tokyo; for if he saw his father again, he knew he might very well forgive him once more and lose what remained of his dignity. There would always be a motive, always an excuse. However, if he thought that the only way of preventing this was refusing to see his father ever again, he felt a horrible sensation curling up his stomach, too. Was this normal, was this fair?

_How could he be so weak?_

He had to battle it somehow, he had known it since that day, a year ago. Never, as his name was Himura Kenji, would he listen to words anymore unless he wanted to end up destroyed. He had sworn it when he had decided to come to Kyoto; that he would become a great swordsman who showed no emotions, like Hiko, and that he would be able to battle his unruly heart to prevent anyone from playing with him. Supreme techniques, unparalleled swordsmanship… perhaps his Shishou was right, he did not _really _crave for them, but the ability of suppressing his feelings and not making a fool of himself, the aura of greatness that made his father _always _be in the right, as heroes were, would be something he would learn or die in the attempt. The time for talking was over.

"I won't forgive him this time," he said aloud, in a determined tone. "No, I won't! Whatever everyone says! He might as well come himself to Kyoto!"

But, just as he had said those words, a familiar flare of ki suddenly penetrated his senses and interrupted his irate monologue. Kenji stopped at once, and stood in alert. Hiko? No; the old master's ki was much stronger. Obviously, it wasn't his father either, in spite of the ironically appropriate timing…

_Yahiko! _he realised, feeling a sudden knot in his stomach. Moments later, the bushes that covered the path of the forest opened with a rustling noise in front of his eyes, and the young samurai stepped in front of him. Kenji could not hide his astonishment. It wasn't an image brought there by his musings, he _had_ come from Tokyo.

_What could this mean?_

"Kenji," he said, as he dusted his clothes up. His face was in tension, and there was a strange gravity in his eyes that the younger man had almost never seen there before. "Come with me. You _must_ return to Tokyo at once."

(to be continued)


	5. Chapter Four: Kenji´s Arrival

**Note: **Half an hour after stepping into Tuesday, I update at last! Here, Kenji at last decides to "get moving", but it´s not sure whether this should be necessarily a GOOD thing or not….( Trust me, all of you who are waiting for a Yahiko vs Kenji fight: there WILL be one in this story. Only not now.)

Thanks very much, to all my reviewers, and to Margit Ritzka for beta.

Eclipse 

**Chapter Four: Kenji's Arrival**

_The boy cringed as he stood alone in the middle of the courtyard. There was a strange, ominous silence floating over the place, and this, he did not know exactly why, was giving him bad presentiments. He had arrived a few days late. Only a few days, and didn't his father always do that as well?_

_The sun had just set, and the horizon was bathed in a red light that heralded the darkness of the night. Kenji felt a cold breeze starting to get through his scarce garments and this convinced him at last to get moving. When he put a hand to the shoji, he discovered that it was already open._

_"Mother…!" he called, stepping inside the dark. At first he got no answer, but when he repeated his cry his ears could register a weak voice answering him from her bedroom. Immediately, Kenji rushed there, and slid the shoji open._

_"Mother, I'm Kenji!" he shouted. He was starting to feel a surge of panic rising inside him that gave wings to his actions, and that could do nothing but augment when he saw the spectacle that awaited him in the closed space of the chamber. Kaoru was there crumpled against her bed in front of a candle. Though she had evidently taken great efforts to wipe them out and make a pleasant face as soon as she had heard him come, Kenji's piercing eye was able to discover traces of tears on her cheeks. Maybe she had been even holding **that **kimono again, he thought in an explosion of bitterness, but she had been able to discard it before his arrival._

_"Welcome home... Kenji." she spoke. There was an eerie and exasperating false smile upon her pale sad face._

_"Where is he?" he demanded, forgetting about the answer to her greeting and, as a whole, about all forms of politeness. The bad presentiment he had had before was choking him now, robbing him of all his senses. "Where?"_

_Kaoru fixed her glance into his, then lowered it as if she was suddenly afraid that he would see the look in her eyes. A long silence followed, broken only by the accelerated and irregular beating of Kenji's heart._

_"He's gone," she said at last. "He left yesterday."_

_The boy staggered, feeling as if his worst fears had been confirmed._

_"Tell me, Mother," he said after a dark pause. His voice came out cool and composed, but under the sleeves of his kimono he was digging his fingernails into his bleeding palms. "If he doesn't care for seeing me or not… couldn't he at least take into account the trip I've had to make?"_

_"Your father loves you very much," Kaoru recited quickly, the same old, empty litany that only contributed to make her son madder. Love was a horrid thing, he could not help but think as he watched in the dim light of the candle the anguished features of the person who had to steep so low as to defend the man who was making her cry. Was this the strong and happy woman he had used to know?_

_It made him sick. _

_"Indeed he does," he answered, trying to avoid a surplus of sarcasm that would hurt her even more. He **wasn't** like him. "So what now? Do you want me to stay here with you until he returns?"_

_Kaoru gave a long sigh, and crawled aside so that he had enough space to sit down onto the bed and give her a kiss. She remained unresponsive, though, and for a moment Kenji was unable to guess what was hidden behind her glassy eyes._

_"Kenji," she started at last. "He…won't return. In months, maybe in years."_

_"What?" The boy froze again. "He **what**?"_

_His mother's glance got lost in the distance, probably in the undetermined shadows that the candle created in the corner of the room._

_"Your father…has left for China."_

* * *

Kenji looked up, and made a desperate attempt to focus on the reality that surrounded him. The sun was shining outside, and there were drops of sweat on his forehead even as he sat in the cool shade of Hiko's cottage. Birds were singing in a screeching choir, and Yahiko and his Shishou were exchanging pleasantries about the former having broken the shoji of the house the first time he had been there, and also about a situation when he had been about to wet his hakama facing a giant, many years ago. Then, the conversation turned to the people in Tokyo, and Yahiko said that Tsubame was pregnant. Kenji hadn't known that. So she was with child at last…

"And what about my stupid student?" Hiko asked. His tone got a bit more serious now, as he served the tea and gave Yahiko a cup. "He has returned to Japan, you have said?"

Yahiko nodded gravely.

"Yes. He returned on a late ship, and now he's in Tokyo with Kaoru. He is… very ill."

"I see…"Hiko crossed his arms over his chest, and sighed. "And I'm sure he pushed himself over his limits _again. _Well, Kenji..." His dark eyes were suddenly set on the figure of his second stupid student, who could not help but feel his heart jump inside his chest. Until then, he had just been sitting there, forgotten in the conversation as the battle in his insides progressed. There had been time for the anger, then the worry, and now, finally, the new fear of a distant call that would be stronger than his own determinations. His mother hadn't been able to resist it …

He was stepping on the border of the precipice.

"It seems it's time to call a halt to your training," the old man continued. "They want you back."

Kenji stared back at him, then at Yahiko, who waited for him with an unreadable glance.

"_Who _wants me back?" he asked at last, failing to keep a neutral tone. So be it, a part of him thought as the rest was overcome with the dreadful unfairness of the whole situation. Better to be angry than to be…

_…scared?_

"Your father wants you back, Kenji," Yahiko said. "Since he arrived, he has been constantly asking for you."

"Really?" _Too late. He can't redress his wrongs now. He can't…_ "And what does he want to tell me that he can't say by letter?" he asked, with a hint of anxiousness in his voice.

Yahiko shook his head.

"I don't know. He's the only one… who might know that. But he asked for you, lots of times."

"Oh, well" the young man snorted. "Then tell him that, at least according to my experience, people usually don't come as much as you ask for them!"

"Kenji!" The samurai sighed, barely able to contain his impatience. "Why can't you leave this childishness behind and reason like an adult?"

This was the last detonator that Kenji had needed to throw away all he was hiding. Seething in anger, he got up, and gave Yahiko a smouldering glance.

"So that's what you understand for "being an adult"? Returning to Tokyo without finishing my training just because my father, who has never been there for me, wants me to be there for him? Did he ever leave anything unfinished because of me? Then you're right… I'm _not _such a being! I don't care if he sends you or anyone else a thousand times. I couldn't care less!"

The words escaped his throat one by one, in an uncontrollable cascade he could not stop. He had never felt so horrible, so torn between his conflicting emotions. If his father had appeared on Hiko's mountain and said he had come all the way from their city just to attempt a reconciliation, if he had _really _asked for his forgiveness for the first time in his life, he knew perfectly that he would have relented in spite of his resolutions. But like this… no, like this _never! _

_How could he have stood himself ever after, knowing he was nothing more than a fool who had built the illusion of being loved by a man who had not even been the one who…?_

Still, and this was the irony of the situation, at the same time he was afraid Yahiko would leave, and felt helpless for not being able to stop the harsh words that kept coming to his mind. The words he feared the most… and that were now on his lips, imminently, like an inevitable closure.

"And, let me tell you one thing. I won't _even _have the most remote thought of returning to Tokyo until he comes here himself and asks for my forgiveness!"

Yahiko stood up too, and made a strong gesture that prevented him instinctively from turning away and leaving. From the look on his face, Kenji could see he was as angry now as he was himself. Hiko, meanwhile, stayed impassive on his place, watching the confrontation.

"You don't understand. You don't understand at all!" the young samurai shouted." He _can't _come here to ask you anything. What words can I use to make you grasp the whole situation? Kenji, _your father is dying!_"

The precipice wavered for an instant, then rose violently to meet the young man's eyes.

* * *

"And how are we going to return?" Kenji asked. The afternoon shades had begun to cool the hot morning atmosphere a bit, and both Yahiko and he were sitting at the door of the cottage to plan next day's trip. Hiko was busy painting vases at the other side of the house; since that morning, he had more or less let them be without saying a word.

"By ship," Yahiko answered. "That should leave us there in four days."

"I don't have any money," the younger man objected. "I really wasn't planning on… returning yet."

"I see," the samurai sighed. Though dust had already had plenty of hours to settle, there was still a thin uneasiness floating around since that morning's argument. "Don't worry for the money. I have enough for both of us."

"But…"

"I owe it to…"

"My mother. I know," Kenji grumbled. "But I'm not my mother."

"Well…" Yahiko allowed himself a brief smile for the first time since his arrival. "Pay me when you have money, then."

Kenji furrowed his brow.

"I was planning on finishing my training, and then… well, work, I suppose." he said. "Maybe set a dojo… though I've heard that this business is not very prosperous of late."

"It works fine for us and also for Yutaro," Yahiko answered with a shrug of his shoulders. "But what are you planning to teach? Hiten Mitsurugi?"

"That, definitely, is _not _an option," Kenji mused aloud, with some regret in his voice. Hiko had been right, he hadn't ever expected to get anything from that training except… well, something that had proved useless this very morning. Now, the pain was already turning into a dull ghost that slowed his every action, and held his limbs and his tongue whenever he wanted to do something or talk. He was unable to decide whether he wanted to continue fuming or to weep, and this was probably what had allowed him to keep what remained of his composure for so long.

"Yahiko-san… is he really so bad?" he asked at last, unable to keep his thoughts focused on any other issue anymore. "I heard that the disease usually lasted more years."

The young samurai's hand started to pluck weeds of grass distractedly.

"China and the war has been a devastating experience for him," he said. "Enough to… accelerate its effects."

These words had the virtue to rekindle a bit the irate flame of the morning. Kenji shifted in his sitting place uneasily, and shook his head with vehemence.

"But _why _did he have to go there? He didn't even dare to wait for me, and hear what I had to say about his mad idea! And… how could he do that to _her_?"

Yahiko opened his mouth at this, but then seemed to pause and think, and closed it again. How bad should things be, Kenji thought somewhat sourly, if even Yahiko did not know what to answer?

"I see," he said at last, simply, "that you haven't forgiven him yet."

"Of course not. Would you expect me to?" the younger man retorted. "I'm going because… because it can be my last opportunity to solve things at all. "His voice failed him at this point, but he forced himself to be strong and continue. "At least he's there to hear what I have to say, now."

The samurai smiled, and stretched an arm to pat his shoulder.

"That's a good attitude."

"But I won't be satisfied with a simple "Hello, I'm sorry", Yahiko-san. I have many motives not to be. He might be ill, but as long as he has ears to hear…"

Yahiko frowned, and threw him a warning look.

"You can't upset him, Kenji. He's very fragile…"

"Then, why did you come for me at all?" the young man exclaimed, trying at the same time to hide the terrible sensation he got whenever he heard anything about his father's terminal state. He was ill. Just ill. _Nothing more. _"Is to bring someone who has a grudge against him to his house the best way to care for his fragility?"

"He was desperate to see you. Asking for you all day. Maybe, who knows? he has had time to think about his problem with you over and over in China, and wants to come to a solution."

"Solution? We'll see to _that_!"

Kenji got up, in an agitated mood that did not pass wholly unnoticed to Yahiko. Leaving him at the place, he walked away, and his footsteps carried him almost involuntarily to the place where Hiko was immersed in his work. The old man was diligently dipping his brush in paint to draw colourful flowers on the vases he had made, with a tired air about his face that surprised his apprentice. When the boy reached his side he didn't even give him a nod of acknowledgement.

"Hiko-shishou…" he started, after standing at his side awkwardly for some five minutes. The man stopped for a second to dip his brush again, and gave a small grunt in response. "I'm leaving tomorrow morning, with Yahiko-san."

At this, Hiko semed to think at last that it was high time to pay him a bit of attention, and left the vase in its place with care. While he did so, he lifted his glance towards Kenji, and nodded.

"I know. And I will join you soon, after I have taken care of several things."

"What?" This took the young man completely by surprise. "You are going… to…?"

"To Tokyo, yes. It's seventeen years since I last left this place," Hiko continued. Kenji could spot something strange in his tone… was it regret? Sadness? "But I have things to do first."

"Well… I will tell the people in Tokyo that you are coming, then," The boy's lips curved in a tentative smile. "So that they'll have the sake prepared."

"I'll bring my sake with me," Hiko answered with a frown. "You rude ignorant."

Kenji arched his eyebrows, and felt a surge of nostalgia coming over him. He was going to miss his training, indeed. Or at least some aspects of it…

_And, by the way…_

"Will you… will you forgive me for leaving my training?" he asked, fidgeting with the right sleeve of his kimono. "I haven't finished it."

"And you wouldn't ever have," Hiko answered coolly. Kenji was left speechless for seconds, and then started to feel his blood boil.

"Why not?" he shouted. Petulantly again, of course, he realised when it was already too late.

"Because you're an immature idiot. See?" the old man replied in triumph. Then, sighing deeply as if he was weary, he got up, and dusted his white mantle with care. "Now, come with me. I have something to give to you before you leave."

Swallowing a lot of things he _could _have said to the insufferable jerk, Kenji followed him in silence towards the cottage. Yahiko wasn't sitting where he had left him anymore, and he figured that maybe he had gone away to practice or to meditate elsewhere. Kenji had been surprised at how much had those months changed the Yahiko he knew, so he was ready to expect anything from him now.

As they got inside the building, the young man had to stay at the doorstep for some time, blinded by the sudden transition from light to darkness. When his eyes got at last somewhat accustomed to the new shade, he saw that Hiko was inside, kneeling to search for something in a box in the corner.

"What's…" he started to ask, while he approached him. The old man turned back, and before he even could finish a phrase he found himself with a carefully folded paper into his hands. "Uh? What's that?"

"A letter your father sent me while he was in China," Hiko replied. "It _just _struck me you might need some help to figure out the man you're going to meet."

Kenji stared incredulously at the paper, then at Hiko - who had an unreadable expression again , and then, once more, back at the paper.

"What the…?"

"Spare me the expletive and get making supper," the old man grumbled turning back and leaving the room. "I have many pots to paint yet."

For a long while, Kenji stayed motionless, his eyes fixed on the letter in his hands. Suddenly, though, as he got back into motion, he rushed to hide it in his kimono as if it burned him with its touch.

* * *

_(Tokyo)_

Kaoru knelt at the edge of the futon, and slowly helped the tired man to lay his weight on it. He was shaking a bit, probably because of the cool air.

"Thank you," he whispered, giving her a warm smile. "Kaoru-dono."

"Have nice dreams, Kenshin," she answered, as always having to suppress a knot in her throat as she did so. The remembrances were _too strong…_whatever she did, she could not forget that last night in which she had tucked him inside his bed, and how they had ended up sharing everything they had for the first moment in their lives.It remained the most treasured memory of all in her mind.

With diligent but careful movements, she arranged the blankets over him, and gave him a kiss on his cheek.

"Are you cold?"

The man stared at her for a moment, then shook his head.

"No."

"Is there anything you want?" she insisted." Water? Tea?"

Kenshin shook his head to everything, and stretched a hand out of the covers to touch hers.

"You're better," he smiled. "That's good."

"Megumi-san has allowed me to walk around the house as I please today," she winked, taking the proffered hand into her grasp. "Maybe in some days I'll be able to go out."

Kenshin seemed to think about this for a while, his glance lost into some indeterminate point. Finally, he snapped out of his musings, and set a pair of inquiring eyes on his wife.

"Is Kenji going to arrive tonight?" he asked. Kaoru almost didn't succeed in suppressing the sigh this time.

"I don't know," she replied in a patient voice. "Maybe. Good night, love."

As she kissed Kenshin's forehead and blew the candle off, the woman was not able to meet his glance again. In a slow pace, she tiptoed out of the now dark chamber and slid the shoji closed behind her back; and only then she allowed herself to bow her head in worry.

"Asking for him again?" a female voice asked in a whisper. Kaoru turned back, and saw Megumi standing in front of her.

"Yes," she nodded. "I don't know what I'm going to do."

"Come over here and sit with me for a while," the doctor offered in a sympathetic tone. "I want to finish that book tonight."

The younger woman did not say anything, but followed her to the sitting room and sat down at her side. The temperature was agreeable there, next to the burning lamps, and she was almost tempted to take her haori away and risk a scolding.

"Why do you think that Yahiko hasn't arrived yet?" she asked after brooding for a while in silence. Megumi sighed softly, and put her book aside.

"It's ten days now since he left. Do you think he can fly?"

"Explain that to _him,_" Kaoru retorted. "And besides… you didn't see Kenji when he left for the last time. I fear… I fear he might not come anymore."

The older woman blinked.

"Do you really think that of your son?"

"This is not about what I think of him, Megumi-san," Kaoru explained, leaning back with a somewhat ashamed expression. "I hate to admit it… but he has reasons to feel hurt. And it's _my _fault, not Kenshin's, even if _he_ blames him. I failed to make my son understand his father, and never managed to appear in his eyes as anything else than a victim that should be avenged. I… I would give anything I own so that he would be able to listen to me and understand at last."

Megumi furrowed her brow.

"Don't be ridiculous. You can't help being in the middle of this conflict, Kaoru, or that your son uses you as a curtain to avoid showing that's _him_, the one who feels wronged," she said. "Lean back and cease feeling worried, or you'll never fully recover."

"But..."

"Yahiko will return as soon as he is able to. Don't you think he'll be remembering all the while that Tsubame-chan is staying with Yutaro?"

"Uh…? Oh, I don't think so," For the first time in all the conversation, Kaoru smiled at this thought. "There's Yutaro's Prussian sweetheart to take into account. What was her name, again…?"

"Don't even try. It's impossible to pronounce it correctly," Megumi answered with a grimace. "But it seems Yahiko took her into account as well, since he didn't mind that Tsubame stayed with them this time…"

Kaoru widened her eyes.

"And who wouldn't? That woman would whack Yutaro-kun down and tie him to a tree if he dared to get closer to another woman. I didn't know foreign women were so scary!"

"_Foreign_ women?" Megumi could not help but snort. "_Who_ whacked the hitokiri Battousai on the head with a wooden sword regularly?"

"And who can make any man feel ashamed of himself with a single sentence?" the younger woman counterattacked with a playful look in his eyes. Both stared at each other in mock warning for a while, and then, as if on previous accord, they giggled.

"We're much scarier than any foreign woman anytime," the doctor concluded. "And it's good to see you on the mood again."

Kaoru nodded, her smile now tinged with a bit of sadness.

"Thanks to you, Megumi-san. Since you're here, I…uh?"

Suddenly straightening her limbs in alert, the kenjutsu master interrupted herself at mid-sentence. Megumi straightened, too, and looked everywhere, but when she was unable to see or hear anything she set a pair of astonished eyes on her friend.

"What's the matter with you?" she asked in puzzlement. "Are you feeling…?"

"Kenji," Kaoru muttered, getting up to rush towards the entrance. "It's Kenji. And Yahiko too, coming here at a quick pace."

"Are you sure?" The older woman had spent enough time among swordsmen to know that great swordmasters were able to sense each other's ki in the distance. But Kaoru…?

_Well, it's her son, after all, _she mused to herself, shrugging her shoulders. Because of many unfortunate reasons, she wouldn't ever know what to have a son was like, but she could imagine. And, effectively, as she listened, some muffled voices started to reach her ears from the distance… from the courtyard of the house.

_Don't tell me she's…_she mumbled in mild anger, heading outside to receive the newcomers and give her patient an earful. Definitely, she thought, that girl would _never _learn.

* * *

"Kenji! I'm so… so glad!" As soon as she was able to distinguish the young man's form, Kaoru couldn't help but run to embrace him strongly, with all the love of a mother for her lost son she had not seen in more than a year. When she was in mid-embrace, though, a terrible remembrance came to her mind, and she let go of him a bit abruptly.

"You… you have grown very much." she muttered, hiding her sudden urge to retreat behind an appreciative glance. "My, you're a man, now… And so strong!"

"We came as soon as we could," Yahiko explained, in the midst of the uncomfortable silence that had arisen between mother and son. Megumi's silhouette could be seen walking towards them against the light in the porch, and he turned towards her for help. "Megumi, you're here! I see you got Tsubame's letter."

"Yes, I'm here," the woman said in a stern voice. "But I do not know very well _why. _I told you not to go out in the night, and you ignore me completely, Kaoru!"

"Sorry…" the addressed one muttered, returning towards the warmth of the house with Kenji in tow. "I… I had completely forgotten for a second!"

"Are you ill, Mother?" her son asked in a worried tone. As both stepped in, the light of the lamps lighted their faces, and they were at last able to see each other in detail. Kenji let his eyes wander over his mother's form, and looked very alarmed at what he saw.

"What has… happened to you, Mother?" he tried again, his voice now reduced to a whisper. Kaoru had to cringe, feeling as old, pale, sick and weary as she never had felt before under her son's piercing scrutiny. She felt almost tempted to run, to free herself from his grasp and hide any clue of the truth from him.

_He was…**so** like his father…_

"I…" She lowered her glance. "Your father came with a fever, and I caught it." Her son's grip tightened, and it was as if in a nightmare that she saw him lifting her arm. "But I'm almost… what are you doing, Kenji?"

Too late, she realised his intentions. As frightened as she had never been before, she pulled back, but not quickly enough as to prevent him from seeing the rashes that decorated her arms. His son's eyes widened, and his face was suddenly drained of its colour.

"Mother… This is…,"he stammered. She opened her mouth in anguish, and tried to say something, but no word escaped her throat. How could the worst thing possible happen _not even five minutes after his arrival_? "This…is…"

"Hey! What's the matter, Kenji?" Yahiko stopped with Megumi at the threshold. "Have you become a …?"

"Oh, _no_," Megumi whispered, letting go of his arm as soon as she understood the situation. "You've done it this time, stupid tanuki!"

"Where is he?" At last able to snap out of the surprise at the terrible discovery, Kenji was bent into action. Yahiko did not remember having seen him so enraged, even during the scenes he had made in Hiko's cottage on the mountain. "Where is he?"

"No!" Kaoru cried with all her forces. Showing a sudden inhuman strength, she rushed forwards, and got into her son's way to stop him. As if electrified into motion by this, Megumi ran towards the inner shoji too and disappeared through it, leaving Yahiko definitely alone with a situation he understood less and less at each passing moment.

"What the..!"

"I must see him!" Kenji continued to shout, unable to fight his maddened mother. "I must see him now!"

"It was not his fault!" she cried. "I was the one who chose, I decided to do it even if he didn't want to! I am the one you should hate, not him! Hate me if you want, but, please, leave him out of this!"

Kenji froze a second time at those words, and his struggles subsided for a moment.

Kaoru stepped forward slowly and, with some hesitation, she dared to pull him into a cautious embrace.

"But... but why? Why?" he asked, in a soft voice full of desperation. "Why? Why must things always be like this? Why?"

Yahiko, who was slowly starting to understand, kept himself apart from the scene, staring to the ground. Suddenly, he felt too terrified as to lift it, look at Kaoru and see the truth that Kenji had discovered already. It could not be…

"I will have many years to live, my son," the woman mumbled, caressing his red hair. "Many, many years. And, if you leave me again, this will be the only thing I will have left of him… see?"

The young samurai lifted his glance at last, in the precise moment to see Kenji's face contract at Kaoru's words. As long as he lived, he thought, he would never ever see on anyone a deeper expression of sudden horror.

* * *

When she had realised that the ruckus was inevitable, the only course of action which had appeared in Megumi's mind had been to check on Kenshin immediately. Leaving the room in a hurry, she ran towards Kenshin's and Kaoru's bedroom, and there she stayed still on the doorstep for a while, trying to hear noises inside. The only things she heard, though, were the sound of Kenji and Kaoru's voices from the other room.

_Dammit,_ she thought, a bit less ladylike than what was her custom. Though she understood her and her motives better than what she _should_, this couldn't cloud her vision enough not to notice that the girl had done a great stupidity that would make things a lot more difficult not only for her. The selfishness of love, that's how people called this. Oh, if only Ken-san hadn't been so…dysfunctionally particular about his things during their life together!

_Dysfunctional, dysfunctional. We all are, _she grumbled, sliding the shoji open. _That's why things are **always **happening to us of all people._

As she got inside, she could not help pausing for a while again, and then tiptoed carefully towards the futon. Kenshin was asleep, even if rolling so much in the bed that she guessed that he was having a perturbing dream. The shouts had now subsided in the distance, and the woman was able to hear whispers in a foreign language coming from his lying form.

_Chinese,_ she realised in puzzlement. Kaoru had told her, but it was the first time she could hear him herself. It was very difficult, but for an instant she thought she could fathom the anguish he had felt there, alone in the middle of the horror. She felt a surge of compassion coming over her, and passed her hand over his hot forehead tenderly, thinking of all the times she had had nightmares as well, alone in an empty bed.

"Sleep well," she whispered, in an alluring tone. "Rest by night from the pains of the day. You deserve it more than anyone, Ken-san."

To her agreeable surprise, the man seemed to cease moving at her touch. Giving a soft groan, he laid his head on the pillow, and his breath regained its regularity once more. On her impassive, scarred face, a smile began to appear, the first true one in so many years.

_I could have taken care of you, _she mused, as she closed her eyes to prevent a tear from escaping. _I would have also given my life for you, if you only had let me. But I guess I never even stood a chance._

Her hands went mechanically towards the discarded blankets, which she began to arrange with care on top of his thin, now shivering body. Then, when she had finished her task and inspected her handiwork behind a hazy veil, she caressed his cheek again, together with the humid red strands of his hair.

"Hmmm…" he muttered in a sleepy tone, instinctively shifting position to get closer to the touch. "Thank you… Kaoru…"

Megumi pulled her hand back, and got up to leave with a sad smile.

(to be continued)


	6. Chapter Five: Forgiveness

**Note: **In this chapter you have the long-awaited confrontation. Sigh...things normally don´t happen as they´re meant to. Thanks to all my reviewers and to Margit for beta and for suggesting aggressive and unpronuntiable names for Prussian noblewomen. ;)

Eclipse 

**Chapter Five: Forgiveness**

Dawn found a lonely, haggard looking figure sitting under the porch of the house. His eyes, heavy from lack of sleep, were kept fixed on the rosy and glowing haze of the horizon, and his only movements were to shiver imperceptibly whenever his body was touched by the humidity of the dew. He was back home, and those damp smells and sounds were the ones he had felt and heard since he had been born… but now, not much to his surprise, the only feeling they brought to him was a dreadful inner turmoil, and the instinctive urge to get up and leave.

_To escape…_

A soft, heavy smell reached his nostrils, and he felt the planks of wood crack a bit behind his back. Not wanting to turn back and show the black circles under his eyes, he strengthened his grip on his knees and curled his body a bit more, almost defensively.

"You shouldn't be here," he said. His voice came out with a shocking hoarse stridency, so, ashamed, he fell silent again.

"I know," his mother answered. Birds were singing in the trees that grew along the way, behind the wall. "But I wanted to speak with you."

Kenji repressed a sigh, and moved a bit to his right to leave space for her. As she took the cue and sat down, her inevitable, motherly gasp did not take too much time to come.

"Kenji!" she cried, putting an arm around his shoulder. "You…you look as if you hadn't slept in all night!"

"You, too." he retorted ruefully. "I…"

"Don't say anything," she stopped him. Her eyes took a dim, sorrowful colour, and she let them wander slowly over the ground under the porch. "Yesterday night I was sick, worried and tired. What I said… I need you to know for sure that the… implications you might have drawn from it are _not_ true."

Kenji gave a long sigh.

"I left you, too. You were right."

"You're not responsible for me," Kaoru replied, heightening the tone of her voice. "You were in the age and the situation in which anyone should have the opportunity of going away and learn a bit about himself. You _needed _to go. As for me… I was only being consequent with my choices when I decided this."

"Choices…?" Kenji asked. He felt emotionally drained after rolling on his futon and sitting there for all night, and, for a moment, he felt as if, somehow, he was not even able to feel things with the intensity with which he had used to feel them before. It was almost as if he was floating in a cloud of exhaustion. "Which choices? To turn your life into a continuous suffering? And this process started when? When you married _him_?"

"My choice was to share my life with him and understand his pain," she replied patiently.

Her son shook his head.

"Say what you may, I left you. Since Father got ill, I had been coming here only when he came, and when he left definitely, I did so, too." Pain started at last to creep inside his gut, but he ignored it stoically and with pride. "I'm an adult now, and I've reached the… conclusion that, after that, I can't blame _you_ for leaving _me_. But it grieves me to see you with this… hopeless attitude that's so unlike you, as I used to know you." His voice darkened with a suppressed emotion. "And I…"

Kaoru frowned, before she rushed to interrupt him.

"Leaving you? What sort of words are these?" she exclaimed, straightening her back. "I am not going anywhere, Kenji. If you leave _me,_ on the other hand… it's your choice."

"My father said the same," he answered bitterly. "Not even three years ago."

"It was different." The woman then started a strenuous effort to struggle to her feet, and Kenji found himself lending her a hand out of instinct. "Megumi says that the normal thing in this case is to live from ten to thirty years. Your father was left in a very bad state by the sword technique he practiced. The speed with which the disease spread through his body… - couldn't be more unusual, as if it was welcome by a tired soul who wanted to rest. But, in spite of this, he continued to push himself to the edge to do more, more and more, before he was forced to stop by a greater power. In the end… all his life was reduced to this battle."

"He had to do more before he died, but his death came nearer through his efforts," Kenji summed up, in a carefully neutral tone. He did not know why, Hiko's voice came back to his mind at unawares.

_When I met him, he had buried dozens of corpses alone, with his own hands. That was what he saw when he learned kenjutsu, and that was also what he saw when he left for China last year…_

"That's…madness," he exclaimed, though his resolve wavered at the final syllables. Was he, perhaps, going mad too?

"It's unfair," she muttered, as if only to herself. "His scar has not faded, and it won't ever fade… in spite of everything he has done."

"Maybe… he got something wrong?"

"Uh?"

Kenji got up like his mother and stood at her side, repressing a shiver as he realised what he had just said. The talk was giving him the creeps. Once more, everything that should look natural from the outside was unbelievably twisted and turned inside this house, and what for the rest of the world would be the crazed imaginations of madmen were powerful forces that caused the death of people. And, what was still worse… for him, it was either drowning in those same waters or being a stranger among his own family.

"Maybe… maybe the best atonement would have been to lead a normal life and avoid tangling other people in his cobweb of insanity," he said in a hoarse voice. "Maybe he even has other things to atone for _now _because of this."

Kaoru looked down, and sighed deeply. After a while spent in apparent meditation, she lifted her eyes, and locked her gaze into his.

_How tired she looked…_

"He _couldn't_ lead a normal life, Kenji, even if he tried," she explained in a patient voice. "He didn't want anybody to be involved, either. Maybe you will understand this one day."

"In any case, he has made people unhappy. And no good reason will erase this," her son snapped. Then, however, he softened his tone a bit, and arranged her almost fallen haori over her shoulders. "And I, too. In the end, I... I suppose I did myself what I hated most about him without even noticing. Forgive me."

Kaoru smiled sadly, and pulled him into a brief embrace.

"Come on." she muttered. "It's time to wake him up."

* * *

"I warn you… the time when he wakes up is his worst moment. After a prolonged sleep, his brain is very confused. Don't take his state now as…definitive."

The light in the room was scarce, in spite of the increasing glow of the sun outside. Kenji stepped inside carefully, following Kaoru's footsteps and paying a distracted ear to her advertences, until a heavy scent reached his nostrils and made him stop dead in his tracks. It was the scent of hospitals that reigned in that secluded space, of disease and decay, increased more than overshadowed by a lavish dose of flower scent. It penetrated his respiratory conducts whatever he did to shut them, and for a first moment he had to make a great effort not to gag.

"Oh, no. He bled all over the sheets again," Kaoru murmured, kneeling at the side of the futon. Kenji ordered his feet to bring him there, at her side, but he found that they didn't want to.

_He hadn't been prepared for this._

Kenshin's body was lying flat on the bed, one arm clutching his chest in a desperate grip and the other, completely covered by bloodied bandages, slung over his face to prevent the light of the morning from reaching his eyes. That blood had smeared the sheets too, during the night, and as Kaoru started pulling the arm away between caresses and soft calls, Kenji could see that it had smeared the face as well.

"Kenshin, wake up. It's morning already. Wake up…."

The young man watched, half in horror and half in fascination, how the pale, bony figure opened a pair of eyes of a waned violet shade, and let them wander for a long time in helpless confusion about his surroundings. He looked frightened and tried to move his body violently, as if being surprised by another person was still engraved in his mind as something dangerous, and, feeling his body chained and unable to react in time, his anxiety augmented even more. Little by little, though, Kaoru's persistent reassurance made an effect, and he started to relax.

"Kaoru…dono," he muttered in recognition. His wife nodded with a smile, before turning towards Kenji.

"Give me the bandages, please," she asked. "They're in the box of the corner. And then, go to the kitchen and fill a bucket of water."

The young man set into motion mechanically, and walked away to do her bidding without even thinking twice. He felt numb, annihilated by the nights he had spent brooding as he fell more and more down the precipice, and, now that he had hit the ground at last, his decisions, his hopes, his good and his bad feelings were lying scattered on it, crushed by the weight of reality.

He had been told that his father was in a sore state, yes. He knew it… and his mind should have extracted its conclusions as he headed home to talk with him for the last time. But in no moment he had foreseen _this_, the sordid concreteness of his father's suffering, his state….

_His degradation…_

As a distant memory, he remembered one of the last conversations his father and he had held together. He had questioned his father's absences and accused him of not caring about his mother (1), and among the explanations that followed, Kenshin had told him that he could not even imagine the despair and desolation of the people he cared for. After this, he remembered too, he had tried to imagine… what had he imagined?

_Nothing. _He could not even imagine, as his father had said. And now… now he had come here to realise that he could only _see._

"Here you are," he whispered to his mother, handing her what she had requested. The woman, who had already removed part of the bandages, now covered the worst part with a blanket so Kenji couldn't see the most grievous ravages of his father's skin, but the young man wasn't even looking in that direction. It was in Kenshin's eyes, ashamedly looking in other direction as his wife worked on him, where his attention had been fixed since the very first moment. His unhealthy looks, the blood, the stench even, were minor causes of the horror slowly creeping into his sleepy mind. The true horror was only written in his eyes, in the loss of his dignity. Kenji remembered his father as someone fiercely independent who didn't allow people to do anything for him, and now, unable even to take care of himself, he was forced to stay there, sitting quietly while others saw the marks of his shame.

"Thank you, Kaoru-dono."

The young man felt his stomach twist inside him, and turned away to leave the room, the house, the _city_, and return to Kyoto again. He didn't hate his father anymore. He didn't even need to talk with him. He was ready to swallow all his accusations, if they only would let him be out of this before he lost his sanity. He could not stand it any longer…__

"Kenji? Is it…you?"

Feeling all his hopes sink to his feet, Kenji froze in his tracks at the sound of the feeble voice. As he willed himself to turn back, he could see his mother diligently stepping aside after she had taken away the last bandages, and his father's eyes fixed on him with a clouded expression of disbelief that soon turned into joy.

"Kenji…," he muttered, struggling to get up in his bliss. Just in time, however, he seemed to remember about his exposed, bleeding body, and he crumpled back to curl under the blanket with a forlorn expression. "I'm sorry."

Kenji's heart wrenched.

_You will be forever the fool who is unable to keep to his own decisions._

Everybody always had to pity him. Everybody, even you.

_He went away without even saying goodbye._

_He never cared for me!_

Kaoru got up in silence, and took the bucket in her hands while muttering something about the bathhouse being the best option. Kenji didn't even see her, struggling as he was to prevent the flow of his tears. His father took his hand, and he had to cringe at the hot touch while pity and shocked compassion invaded his heart in cascades.

That was not what he had steeled himself against. _Never. _His calculations had all failed strenuously. What he had been prepared to fight had been his father's aura of wisdom and experience, the piercing glance that robbed him of his argumentations as he made him see, point by point, how childish and selfish it was to prevent his departures, and how little did he know about life and the people who suffered. It was his influence on all the people who surrounded him, even Kenji's own mother, impossible to break even after the attempts of many years.

It was the quiet authority in his tone, never giving in, never flinching in his convictions, never feeling as if he had to, and never, ever, asking for excuses…

"Kenji, forgive me."

The boy stiffened, and felt his legs failing him in the first instants of raw denial. It could not be true. He had _not_ heard that.

_It had to be an error._

Kenji fell on his knees at his father's side, and noticed that the man was trembling, his eyes more glassy than ever. Great, he tried to tell himself to snap away from his state of shock, and now he had lost it. That was exactly what the situation had been lacking.

"Those people… I killed them, Kenji!" he whispered. "When I asked for their forgiveness, they were dead. And they won't hear me… never ever…."

There was such anguish, such a frantic urge in his voice that his son stayed quiet, afraid to breathe. It was shortly after when he realised that he was just _being asked forgiveness for the death of people he hadn't ever met_. Was this his father's brain decay speaking? Had he definitely gone mad?

_Or was this what he had always felt, hidden behind that composure he had lost?_

For a moment, Kenji pictured himself towering over that pitiful figure, accusing him of the wrongs he had committed against him while his target didn't even hear what he was saying, tortured by the images of the corpses he hadn't been able to save and the remembrances they had brought of those others that he had killed himself with his own hands. Only seeing that he was angry, and that he did not forgive him. _Because, _he saw it clearly for the first time, and as much as it hurt his selfish, little soul,_ all his father needed now was the forgiveness of **someone**._

The young man's cheeks reddened and he felt a surge of shame at himself as he imagined the ridiculous situation. _Damn him!. _He had been defeated again. While he thought his position was growing stronger, it had only been growing weaker… and now, terrible realisation, there was only one option left for him anymore.

_If there ever had been any other._

"I… I forgive you, Father."

The words came from his mouth with a great effort, hoarse from the knot that he had in his throat. He could see Kenshin smile, and allowed himself to be swept in his embrace with pity and repugnance, love and hate battling in his heart. A horrible smell invaded his nostrils when he buried his face in his dishevelled red locks, and he felt his clothes getting wet with blood as they had got wet with water the last time they had got close to each other.

"I can… die," he heard his father's relieved voice mutter next to his ear. "At last… Maybe they'll listen now."

Unable to continue keeping them for himself, Kenji's emotions gave in, and his body was wrecked by the long repressed sobs.

"No! Not yet," he pleaded in a shaky tone, surprising even himself with his words. "Don't leave yet! You promised... you promised you would be here on my birthday. The last one. Please… don't leave yet."

The sick man's limbs stiffened, and his eyes got lost in the distance while he distractedly caressed his son's back.

* * *

_I was the one who chose it. I am the one you should hate._

Great.

Yahiko repressed a grumble, and continued walking in a stormy stride through the Tokyo streets. He was vaguely aware that some people were staring at him because of the way he carried himself, and that his inner repression had come just in time before he had kicked a pile of daikon that had suddenly appeared in front of him when he was crossing the market. On top of this, he had patches under his eyes, since he hadn't slept at all that night.

_And who would?_

So that was the secret she had been hiding for so long. The reason why she didn't hang around the dojo anymore and why each moment found her thinner and paler. He had always thought that all this only had to do with Kenshin, but not in the mad way in which his assumption had finally happened to come true. _Who _would have thought anything like that, anyway?

_She's mad. Mad. And she fooled me into believing she was sane._

Now, he felt very much like the idiot whose role was simply to lean back and watch how everything happened, sometimes getting in the middle and making things even worse because of his ignorance. He had played the idiot convincing Kenji to come back home to find a dying father and a mad mother, who had merrily announced to him that she was doomed to die, too, as soon as he had entered her gates. And all his efforts thrown down the gutter.

_All his hopes thrown down the gutter._

"But why the heck did she have to do something like this to us?" he couldn't help but cry out aloud. A pair of passers-by that were crossing the street at his side in that moment directed their puzzled glances towards him. He glared back at them, and they promptly started to look elsewhere and to mind their business.

He admitted that she hadn't been much the cheerful, feisty and - he had to admit it - strong woman he had known once of late, and that since Kenshin had left, she had become rather subdued. He admitted, too, that the misfortunes of these last three years had taken their toll on her. But he had never given much importance to her moods, and dismissed even Tsubame's worries about the subject. He _needed _her to be well. She was always the woman who took things bravely and smiled back, and when he was afraid he wouldn't be able to do the same, he followed her example. If she could smile after knowing that Kenshin was going to die, how could _he_ let himself be swept away by despair?

It was now and only now, that he was able to get the truth, and realise that her smile had been the same as Kenshin's smile in the first months in which they had known the red-haired swordsman. A mask that hid the depths of her insanity. She had been insane; for how would a sane person have done what she had? It was all senseless. Senseless suffering. Senseless death…

_Did she feel happy now?_

In his talk with Megumi last night, the doctor had told him that Kaoru's body could even stand the disease for thirty years; if her body won the first struggle, it could adopt a hidden form for many more. But Yahiko was not even sure about her will to _win _that struggle at all. Whenever he saw again in his mind that eerie smile on her face last night, as she had been talking to Kenji about the time that remained to her, and he imagined the many eerie smiles she would have smiled for himself in her long nights, alone in her house….he wanted to crawl off his skin.

_And when they're both dead, I'll have to take care of everything. Of the dojo, of the funeral,of their messed up son. Oh, of course, I'm always here for all they need…_

_Even when they're dead…_

Yahiko's face was the grimmest of the whole of Tokyo, as he strolled down one of its main avenues in the direction of the door of Yutaro's house. Unlike Kenji, he understood Kenshin rather well, or he thought he did. In reality, he could hold nothing against his mad search for atonement, and he had had many more glimpses on the importance of the subject than what Kenji ever would. He had also used to understand Kaoru, known when he could insult her or when he would end with a lump in his head, got to admire her qualities and, above all, acquired the unbreakable conviction that she loved Kenshin more than anyone or anything in the world, in such an exaggerated way that her dead father, her dead mother, Kenji, _him _or anybody else wouldn't ever be anything at his side. Yes, as shocking as it sounded. She would do anything for her love, whatever it was, this he had known too…but just around there, there had been things that had begun to escape his knowledge and understanding. Had she destroyed herself _for _his sake? To make him happy? To save him? Or just to emulate him, to be like him after a twisted net of thought processes that he wasn't sure he _ever_ wanted to know about? Since when had everything else ceased to matter to her?

_Since when had she turned into that smiling stranger whose behaviour would scare the girl who once had run behind him hitting his head with a bokken out of her wits?_

Not for the first time, he remembered that day of the Kyoto battle, when Misao and he had been at each other's throats on the roof of the Aoiya because he had mocked her for loving someone like Aoshi. The old man, Okina, had said that he was still too young to understand love, and that the most beautiful thing of that force was its ability to adopt infinite particular forms. He had laughed at this at the time, but later he had found himself thinking too much about it. It had helped him not only to get why Misao could love the Oniwabanshuu weirdo, but also other things like how Tomoe-san could have loved Kenshin, and - _of course! - _how someone like Kenshin could love such an unwomanly, brutal and clumsy woman as Kaoru. Still, if there was something he would never have imagined, it was that he would have to recall it to his mind when thinking about _Kaoru_'s love for Kenshin. And, above all, that it would prove useless for the first time.

_Old fool, _he thought, forgetting in his distress the respect due to deceased people. _Are some of those infinite particular forms called madness?_

The gates of Yutaro's house were in front of his eyes, and for a second he stopped his thoughts to wonder how he had been able to arrive at the exact place without noticing. Shaking his head, he rang the bell, and crossed his arms to wait until a servant, dressed Western style, opened the door.

"I come for Tsubame," he said without any ceremonies, even before the man had the opportunity to open his mouth.

* * *

"Myoujin Yahiko-san has arrived, sir," the servant announced in front of the imposing wooden door. Yahiko shrugged his nose and walked past him inside the profusely decorated room where his friend was sitting on a ridiculous elevation having breakfast. Definitely, he thought once more, since he had inherited his father's fortune and got himself a Prussian fiancée, any sense of taste Yutaro might have possessed had gone down the gutter.

"You look horrible," the blond samurai exclaimed, shrugging his nose. "Where do you come from?"

Yahiko gave him a not very friendly glare that made Yutaro arch his eyebrow.

"You know perfectly where I come from," he grumbled.

"And?"

"Get back to the floor and we'll talk," he deadpanned. His friend shook his head in mild amusement.

"Why don't you just sit down on another chair?"

"Because I only came for Tsubame, anyway," the dark haired samurai retorted, already heading towards the door. As he was going to get out, though, Yutaro got up and quickly walked towards him.

"Hey, wait. You have problems."

"And who wouldn't?" At last having received the cue to unburden himself a bit, Yahiko could not resist the temptation of staying in the room with his only confidant outside the heavy atmosphere of the Kamiya dojo. With a tired expression, he let himself rest on the chair that was situated in front to Yutaro's, and his friend sat down on his again. "You saw the state Kenshin has been reduced to. Unable to stand it anymore after he asked for Kenji about ten times in a day, I made a journey to Kyoto to bring the brat back. And when we arrived yesterday, what do you think we found, except Kaoru with a fever, telling us that Kenshin infected her with syphilis before he left?"

Yutaro's green eyes were lowered in sadness.

"So you know… I didn't think you would already. It's terrible. I spent several days in disbelief, unable to accept it, and, even now, I still do not get why she would do it… but it looks as if it was indeed her choice."

"Her choice?" Yahiko got up with a jump, and started to pace around the room. "Her madness, you'll say. She's mad."

"According to Tsubame, she's deeply in love, to the point of wanting to die for her beloved." Yutaro said with a grimace. "But there's something in that equation I'm still unable to work out. I suppose you have to be a woman in order to understand it. Even Franziska found it "something terribly romantic"!

"Women and gaijin are crazy. If you're both…"

"Hey!"

"But it's true!" Yahiko shook his head, and started pacing again. "I can get a woman who dies to save his beloved, like Tomo… like someone I heard about once. But to die for no reason, that is something I can't get at all. Still worse, she, she…" Without being much aware of what he was doing, the dark-haired samurai seized the back of the empty chair with an iron grip. "She's leaving us for no reason! We'll have to see her grow feeble and lose her mind for no reason! She has forsaken her father's legacy for no reason, as well as her son!"

Yutaro sighed deeply, not surprised at all by his friend's sudden lose of control. The wounds were still recent in him, and he could also recall that first day of disbelief. And, besides…

"Come on, don't make more of a tragedy of it than what it is," he said in a conciliating tone. "Megumi-san said that she has still many years to live. If the disease gets to a latent phase, she can very well have thirty years more of life. You know that she has always been healthy..."

"That's all you care about it!" Yahiko snapped back. "Sit down and make calculations about how many years she has left! Fine, go on! After all, you never were half as close to her and her family than what I am!"

"Of course I was!" Yutaro got up as well, and walked towards the window. Once he was there, though, he stayed strangely motionless and silent for seconds before he decided to talk again. "She always was very important for me…"

Yahiko stayed quiet for a while. In a slow pace, he walked towards the window as well and stood there at his friend's side, watching how people walked the street under their gazes.

"Let's go and meet the women," he proposed at last, in a much more subdued voice. "And please… not another single word about this."

* * *

As both men started to climb the stairs, Yahiko's ears were suddenly assaulted by the terrifying sound of shouts and yells in a foreign language. Wincing, he stopped in his tracks and turned back to Yutaro.

"A fight?" he asked. For the first time since they had seen each other that day, his friend let go of a laugh.

"Franziska is singing. Don't you hear the piano?"

"Singing?" Yahiko's eyes widened in disbelief. "Gaijin are crazy!"

"Stop it with that remark already!"

"But it's true! Who in his right mind would stand a woman screaming all mornings in her room_ here_?

"She's _singing_!" Yutaro shouted back. "And I won't tolerate that you disrespect her again!"

"I believe she can defend herself from this." his friend replied, before stepping back instinctively to dodge the punch that came after his words.

"Ignorant," the blonde samurai grumbled. Then, he gave him his back in a huff and stopped to call at the door from where all the horrible noises that disturbed Yahiko were coming from.

"Yes?" The piano stopped at once, and both were able to hear a grave female voice with a strong accent. Yutaro pushed the door open, and Yahiko followed him in.

"Yahiko has just arrived," the blond samurai announced, pointing at his friend. The room was very big, also decorated with all that imposing furniture, paintings and curtains that helped so much to make Yahiko dizzy. Tsubame was sitting at an enormous sofa that made her look insignificant in comparison, sipping a cup of tea, and, several steps away from her, Yutaro's fiancée got up from the piano to greet them with a delighted squeal.

"Welcome, welcome, Yahiko-san!" she exclaimed, embracing him and kissing him on both cheeks. Yahiko felt as if he could have died of shame in that same instant, but the feeling that Yutaro and Tsubame were watching prevented him from making a total fool of himself. That blonde, tall, and _way _too loud and straightforward woman with dresses full of ribbons was one of the normally fearless samurai's greatest terrors, and this had made him feel in a state of inferiority towards Yutaro for the first time in his life.

"Thanks, er… er… Faranziska-san?" he ventured. Even her name was able to beat all his powers.

"Franziska," she corrected him in a quick, didactic tone. "Franziska von Ossum-Bössinghoven. _Not _Ossum-Bossinghöven Franziska-_von_. It makes me _so _sick! So many people unable to pronounce even a _simple _surname!"

"Uh… erhm… okay," Yahiko nodded. Fortunately, Tsubame went to greet him at this moment, and he could focus all his attention on her.

"I'm so glad you're back," she said with a smile. Her cheerful expression looked somewhat false, though, and he guessed immediately why.

"I heard about it already," he reassured her, smiling for a moment in return. Sometimes, being strong was just too darn difficult. "Why don't we return home? I arrived yesterday and am still very tired."

"Okay." Tsubame took his arm discreetly, and bowed twice to both his host and his hostess. Well….at least it looked as if she had had a small weight taken off her shoulders. "Let's go home."

(to be continued)


	7. Chapter Six: Voices From Far Away

**Notes: **Well, this is definitely running towards its end. ;) Sorry for this chapter, I think it´s the worst I have written in this story yet, but I´m in the middle of exams. They can do really horrible things to the writing style of a person.

**Answer to reviewers: **Franziska is my original character, and was added to the mix with the sole purpose of having some fun. I apologise to German people, but what I´m parodying in her is mostly the behaviour of a certain social class, not of a certain country…. country to which my beta reader belongs, so I have to be careful nevertheless. ;) But Yutaro isn´t an original character. He is Yahiko´s friend/ antagonist in volumes 5 and 6 of the manga. In volume 28, at the final epilogue, we get to know that he has returned from Germany and that he´s an assistant master in the Kamiya dojo, and in the sidestory "Yahiko´s Reversed Blade", which Watsuki wrote after RK, he´s flirting with Tsubame. In my story, he has already inherited his father´s money and has opened a dojo by himself, and is betrothed with a certain charming German lady he met in his "second country".

Also: For everyone who wants to archive or link this story or any other to a webpage, they can do it if they send me a notice before and after they do it. Thanks.

As always, many thanks to the reviewers and also to my beta reader Margit Ritzka.

****

**Eclipse **

**Chapter Six: Voices From Far Away**

_Maybe you'll be surprised at the sudden change of tone of this letter. Or maybe not, since you're certainly the person to read between lines. Still, whatever way, I'm glad to be able to write facts and realities as they are for once; it helps very much to unburden my spirit from things that are eating my strength, my will and my sanity at a quick rate. A person who owes me much is heading back for Japan this week, and he has sworn he will take those letters with him, so this time there won't be anyone opening them before they reach their destination._

_I know that you think I'm an idiot for getting into this mess at all. As far as I am concerned, you're right without discussion about my decision of coming here as a diplomatic representative, as you will have guessed from much less direct bits of information on my part and the impartial judgement of the results. I seethe just to think that most people in Japan have been made to believe that those conversations **really **took place, at least in a decent meaning of the word. Nothing is more excruciatingly far from the truth! I did not come with much hope, from what I had learnt about the government's preparations and Yamagata-san's words, but even so, they managed to surprise me. It was not that the die had been cast since the very beginning; it was that they did not take even the slightest precautions to appear as if they were leaving **any** way open at all, so that if I was able to get as far as I did, be sure that it was just because they considered me a rather ridiculously-dressed and bandaged pointless eccentric, and could not believe I was seriously tryingtodosomething about it. My companions were all bought, the interpreters, and, to my astonishment, even part of the diplomats of the other side were. Oh, I could picture Takeda Kanryuu laughing at me…_

_Still, as you know from other letters, instead of allowing myself to be won over by weariness and despair in the face of that scenario, I gathered myself and did what I could. Against wind and storm, I tried many times to create something that at least could be called a true conversation, while they spent their time making outrageous requests, rejecting other's requests with outrage, and making my attempts impossible overall.The interpreter changed everything I said and I had to learn their language… at my age and state! They tried to send me back, to kill me and even to convince me, but somehow I evaded all three. I won't ever forget, however, the words that the chief of our commission spoke to me once we were having a private talk, and that made me leave that pointless approach in the end. I was getting tired of his honeyed attempts to explain the "situation" to me, and told him that I had come to make peace, and that this was what I was trying to do. He seemed flustered at this, and, getting up, he gave me a smouldering glance and said that "my problem was that I was the only one among them who didn't know I was a puppet." The army was going to come whatever I said or did because the war was "a great opportunity for our country"._

_But what that man didn't know when he said that was the full story of my inner conditioning, and that was his error. He only saw an eccentric idealist whose sword had played a key role in an old fashioned war of the kind that had been fought between factions who had **really **believed they were right, but he had no idea about what drove me forward. (Cease smirking!) I was a man whose deep guilt for everything that his past idealism had helped to create was reaching its highest peaks as we were talking. Who had been brought into the middle of such a situation at the end of his life by some invisible force who wanted him to redeem himself by making the correct decision this time for once. And on top of this, he failed to see even something that people who are close to me have told me many times: that I'm disturbingly good at playing the fool. (Because I **am **one, you'll surely say). So I leaned back and bade him farewell politely, and soon afterwards the conversations came to an end. War was declared, as it was meant to be, and it was time for the puppets to go home and enjoy what they had earned. But not for me. I can't deny it was harder to decide than what I had thought it would be; not because of me, but because I wasn't able to cease thinking of Kaoru, ill and alone, and Kenji, who would surely never forgive me now. In the end, I was able to make the decision…whether it was the correct one or not, I suppose I will never know for sure. I hope my family will at least forgive me after I'm dead._

_I'll obviate the accounts of brilliant military campaigns for various reasons. First, because I'm sure that they have reached even your mountain already, second because I did not take part in them, and third, because my brain isn't what it used to be. You already know about my main official occupation and the reason why they allowed me to stay here, which is to take care of the sick and the injured. And maybe you'll even guess which can be my others, but I apologise for not including them either: though I know this letter won't be opened it's still too great of a risk to publish it here. Remember the will of living for others that I learned from you after fourteen years of confusion? That's what still drives me here, in spite of the circumstances. My sick, slow, eccentric and outdated life (none of the names are mine, but I gracefully accept them) can't have too much worth, and I'm not afraid of dying a year sooner, but, on the one hand, the people who depend on my help and, on the other, the people who are waiting for my return are both my strength and my weakness in this situation._

_I still don't know what will be the end of this, or when it will be. I don't know how much more I'll be able to resist, either, not for lack of will or good intentions, but rather because I'm starting to forget even where I was heading to in the middle of errands, and in spoken speech I'm getting to awkward dead points a little too often. I know you didn't ever consider me too bright, but if you could see me now you would consider my previous self a genius. If my state starts to be a danger for those who are allied with me, which will happen one day too soon, I know I will have to leave. On the meantime, rest assured that I'll try to stand on my two feet as long as I can; at least as much time as my countrymen keep destroying other peoples, and even with this disheartening voice inside me that keeps on shouting that I will die years before anyone sees the end of this. Maybe it's like a chain, and it will never stop, while the strong keep forever preying on the weak. Shishio Makoto´s predictions came true…but I feel, I **know **I could still defeat him in Mount Hiei even now. I said that the day that such a thing happened it would be a deep, deep heresy, and that's what it is. And therefore, I'm fighting it up to my last breath, as I did back then._

_(Only that, I have to admit it, History is decidedly not helping me at present... if it ever really did.)_

_As for my other symptoms…Apart from my brain, my health has also deteriorated overall since I arrived here. The doctor says that the disease is spreading at an unusual speed (which, paradoxically, can be one reason why I'm still alive, if you know what I mean), and my whole body is full of those rashes now. They're annoying to clean, but I have to be impeccable if I want to care for the wounded - and if I don't want people to run away from the stench, of course. Imagine for a moment, I, who have always been so exasperatingly clean…_

_As for inner pains, I suffer from them on a frequent basis as a result from the disease affecting my organs, especially in the lungs and the head. Still, (if you will forgive me this shocking remark), I would say that I had expected it to be more painful. It becomes rather bearable after a while, when you get used, and I've got worse wounds. Physical pain can be controlled when your mind is in full power, as we used to say… so I will leave my worries for the time when I lose my mind definitely. Then again, I won't probably have to worry then either, since being freed from the suffering of the mind would be a gift to which no physical pain can be compared. Right now, as I'm sitting here at night, writing to the light of a half-extinguished candle, I'm feeling it acutely. Only a little more despair, and I will start again to see everything around me covered and wrapped in a hideous disease. It's not my disease anymore, but the disease of the whole world, against which no sword can do anything - as we believed once they could -, except making the wound deeper. Once more and irrevocably, the Hiten Mitsurugi is dead... and I am sick._

_But what…? I've just been able to reread everything I wrote in several nights up to this point, - since tomorrow is the day in which the letter and me will have to part ways -, and I'm deeply sorry. I didn't know I had lost so many faculties yet, and, even more, that I had reached a point in which the person I'm talking to gets blurred in my mind, and all I can do is talk and talk until I get things out that do not concern him. Unfortunately, I don't have time to rewrite it again, so I'll just fold it carefully and cease making a fool of myself. Then I'll also have to finish the letter I wrote to Kaoru, with care not to wake up my exhausted errand-boy, who somehow is able to sleep through all the ruckus of the off-duty soldiers outside but wakes up with eyes wide open if he chances to hear the slightest breath next to him. (I think he's frightened, because he too has endured rather traumatic experiences, but he never lets anything out. Like me, I suppose.) Once I have finished both, I will get to the hospital to have a last look at the patients for today, and will keep my eyes fixed in the distance without saying anything while the people outside mumble excuses about going out for the night with "prostitutes". I'd wish that the moral authority I supposedly have among them would stop the inhumanity **at all**, but it looks as if it only works when they think I might get to know about it. Now I think about it… maybe it's better if I don't go out at all. I don't know if I'm ready to stand certain things right now._

_And yes, I'm aware of what you are thinking. Please, trust me…we will be able to talk about this one day, I promise. Just not **here.**_

_I send my best wishes for your health and your business, and thank you once more for training Kenji. I hope he's at home now with his mother; with him and Yahiko around I don't think she could be in need of protection. I'm sorry for all the other things that she needs and that she can't have right now; but I swear that, short of my death in foreign lands, there's nothing that could prevent me from returning. Which, by the way, brings a last plea to my mind: if by some reason you get to know (through Kenji if he visits you) that she hasn't got my letter while you have, please tell her what I say here. It's all I can do to reach her now._

_So, well…farewell again at last. Time is getting short, the poor kid is mumbling something in his sleep (He reminds me disturbingly of myself when I was young… I'll tell you his story one day), and I have to sign the letter before going to visit the patients one last time. How could I say above that I would not go? Again, sorry for my blabbering, and best wishes from the continent. I hope summer isn't being too devastating for the plants in the mountain._

_Regards_

_Himura Kenshin _

__

Kenji's eyes stayed fixed for a moment on the signature of the letter, then folded it neatly to put it in the box once more, together with his scarce belongings. Morning was radiant outside, and he could hear Kaoru and Megumi's voices in the yard. He should join them now…and his father as well.

The day after his arrival a month ago, he remembered, he had almost despaired of being ever able to argue anything with him, or ask him things that had been spinning in circles in his mind for long. Before this, he hadn't ever thought he would be so grateful to Hiko for giving him that letter he had almost memorised, and that he never forgot to read at least once a day. Though not addressed to him, it was his treasure. In it, Kenji had found all the things that his father _should _have told him long before, and that might have made him understand a little better. He had recognised his voice, filled now of despair, and now of a quiet resolution as he coped with the horror, and this he couldn't deny…the shock had been great the first time, and the second, and the third, but it had slowly turned into an incommodious feeling of foolishness that ended with the amazing inner confession that he felt almost _proud_ of his father. Now, as he sat down and thought about the whole story of their differences and misunderstandings, the realisation that maybe they had been living in different worlds all along did not hit him with bitterness anymore, just with a somewhat disquieting sadness.

Well, at least, he thought once again, since his father had declared with such conviction that he was going to die, there had not been any moves into that direction. A consolation was a consolation. If all, he had entered a new phase of his disease that to Kenji's eyes was infinitely better, in which his mind, clouded to the last degree in that ghastly morning in which he had met him again, had regained much of its sharpness and agility. Yes, the pain attacks in which he fell clutching his chest, his head or some other body part with an agonising face had augmented proportionally… but the young man could not forget what his father had said in the letter.

"Kenji!"

The laughs and shouts of children who played among them reached his ears, helping him return to reality.

"Coming!" he shouted back, making a face and sliding the shoji shut behind his back. Definitely, his mother was feeling _much _better, too!

As he stepped into the clear light of the sun, Kenji was forced to shield his eyes to prevent them from getting blinded. Kenshin was sitting on the porch, and Megumi was kneeling next to him to give him something that looked like tea or a medicine. The young boys were arriving now in groups, filling the yard and unaware of the red-haired man's soft smile while he watched them argue and play.

"Well, about time!"

Kaoru was there too, dressed in an old hakama, with her long dark hair held in a ponytail and her blue eyes twinkling in a smile. Feeling a jolt cross his body, the young man thought for a second that she had never looked more like in his remembrances of the past, until his eyes fell upon the bandages in her arms, and he had to suppress a sigh.

_Time was moving too quickly for him._

"Kenji, dear, we're going to the dojo, and Megumi has things to do. Could you sit with your father here?" she asked. Kenji furrowed his brow a little at the endearment, but nodded.

"You're so grown up now…" she mused aloud. Before her son could do anything to prevent it, she turned to his father and widened her smile dangerously. "Who would think now that he's our baby Kenji, so tall and handsome? I'm sure that all the girls in the city love him!"

"Oh, yess. Even gaijin women love your baby Kenji," a voice joined the conversation in a teasing tone. As red as his hair, the young man turned back, and shot a murderous glare at Yahiko. Some of the boys were already laughing and whispering things - about him- into each other's ears.

"Mind _your _business!" he almost shouted. "And, by the way, you're late!"

But the ordeal was far from over from him yet. Not while there were more hyenas around him to take the cue.

"Ohohoho!" Megumi laughed. "May I know who those gaijin women are? Maybe a certain noble, beautiful and blonde foreign lady?"

"_Of course _not!" Kenji grumbled, walking past them at a brisk pace to sit beside his father. The man was smiling, but at least he didn't say anything at all, which was a very important point in his favour at that moment. Damn him if he understood that weird Prussian woman who hugged him and gave him sweets whenever they metin Yutaro's house or in his own.

"Well… time to start the class," Kaoru muttered, maybe a bit ashamed at the outcome of her too passionate words. Considering that she had spent a lot of time away from him, and that she surely felt she had to make up for the long lack of motherly nuisance, Kenji decided he was even ready to forgive her. Even in front of so many people… "Let's get into the dojo!"

The young man watched the caravan of boys disappear behind his mother and Yahiko, and kept silent for a while, staring at the floor of the yard that had suddenly fallen quiet and empty. Megumi got up, and flashed him an enigmatic smile before she walked back into the house.

_What was it with them people today?_

"Don't you… don't you want some more tea, Father?" he asked, as he noticed the half-filled cup abandoned at his side. The man seemed to snap away from some musing at the sound of his voice, and turned towards him with an alert look in his eyes.

"Sorry," he apologised. "What?"

"Do you want some more tea?" his son repeated patiently. Kenshin nodded, and the young man put the cup on his hands with care not to spill a single drop. The sound of Kaoru's voice rising over a pandemonium of other voices could already reach their ears at that moment, and, soon after, certain noises that made Kenji guess that the boys had taken their swords. Remembrances of the different stages of his own training could not help but come to his mind, and for a moment he wondered whether his father did not ever have similar thoughts.

"They're training," he said. Kenshin nodded again, and continued intently sipping his tea.

"They're playing," he smiled. When he saw Kenji's expression of disbelief, his smile widened.

"Are you good at… Hiten Mitsurugi?" he asked after a pause. He had asked that question several times already, but Kenji had learned from his mother that what he had to do in those circumstances was to answer always with as similar words as possible, to avoid confusing him. Even if he didn't particularly like the words…

"I didn't learn the superior techniques," he confessed for the umpteenth time. "Hiko-shishou should judge for the rest."

"I didn't know them either, when… when…," the older man mumbled, probably to himself. "Oh, how I'd wish to see you…"

Surprised, Kenji turned towards him.

"I _can _show you, if you want," he said, getting up. Kenshin lifted his eyes at those words, but also extended a hand to hold him in place.

"Not now… Not like this… Stay with me, please."

The red-haired youngster sat down again, a bit puzzled at his father's sudden change of attitude. Well, after all, it was his choice…

"Father," he tried instead, decided to use the opportunity to return once more to his arduous efforts to clarify the dark points of his China information. "I was thinking… Could you tell me what did you do in China in secret?"

Kenshin set his empty cup on the wooden planks of the porch, and leaned back in silence with a satisfied smile. Kenji could not help but remember again that remark in the letter about playing the fool disturbingly well, and grumbled.

"Now you're back, and there's no risk anymore. It's over," he insisted. To his astonishment, Kenshin shook his head in denial. Well, well... it looked as if his abilities were failing in spite of all. That was something, at last.

"No, it isn't. Not yet."

"Then, it was something that did not consist solely on you?" he pressed. Kenshin looked somewhat uncomfortable now, but continued to fix his glance on the floor obstinately. His son felt a surge of frustration rise through him, which, as usual, he was not able to disguise very well.

"I see," he replied, forgetting his mother's strong recommendations about not saying anything that could upset him with the indignation of the moment. "You don't trust me. You surely think I'm a spy or something… that's why you didn't send letters to me!"

The remark got to its target with lightning speed, and Kenji could see his father cower in shame. A bit uncomfortable all of a sudden, he bit his tongue.

"Well, you know… I didn't quite mean that," he muttered, starting to feel more stupid than ever. "I…"

"I'm so absurd…" Kenshin sighed, as he began to regain his composure. "Sorry, my son. You're right. I… suppose I never got anything right about you."

Kenji would have fled if he had been able to, once more helpless at the sight of his father's distress. Whenever he recalled that once he had thought even of making him the target of a thousand darting reproaches he could not help but wonder what had he exactly been thinking of at that time. His old attitude was beginning to bother him more and more..and now, even more than ever.

"It's me who is sorry," he sighed. "Really."

Kenshin lifted his face. Slowly, his eyes met his once more, and his mouth curved in a tentative smile.

"Thank you," he exclaimed, with a look of deep gratitude shining through them. "You're kind."

It was only some minutes after that, after the conversation had already turned to more trivial matters, when Kenji recalled the detail that he hadn't really got an answer in the end.

* * *

"Well…and there was that other time… It was two years ago, if I remember correctly. I hid the sake jar so well that he wasn't able to find it!"

"The… sake jar?" Kenshin's eyes widened with delighted astonishment. "You did?"

Kenji leaned back, trying not to look too proud of himself.

"Yeah. His face was so funny! You can't imagine how much I had to use self-contention not to laugh. He was fuming!"

"Ah..."

The older man's gaze turned back slowly to the distance, and his smile dimmed a bit. To his son's attentive glance, it looked as if he was muttering something to himself, and Kenji had to suppress a sigh. He hated it when his father suddenly ignored him. He knew it wasn't really his fault…but he hated it.

"Are you tired?" he asked with some hesitation. "I… can shut up, if you want."

To his surprise, Kenshin turned back towards him immediately, in a real show of good or at least decent reflexes.

"No! Continue. I was just thinking…" His voice became a whisper and he smiled, blushing a little. "I also… hid Shishou's sake away one time."

"Really?" Kenji could not help but laugh at this. "Wow, it seems we have the same ideas!"

Still, as the meaning of those words started to sink into his brain, it was he who grew serious and broody. _The same indeed…_Both had left his mother alone, for one… and one with better reasons than the other.

And he hadn't told him yet.

"I... am going to get some food.", he muttered, getting up and wondering for a moment if his father would still be able to perceive his uneasiness as he used to perceive it before. "I'll be back in a minute. Is there… anything that you want?"

Kenshin lowered his glance in silence. When Kenji was just about to turn his back on him, he took the empty tea cup and handed it to him, flashing an apologetic smile. The boy took it, and walked away to the house.

"Is there anything that you want?" a female voice asked him as soon as he got in. Kenji's body stiffened in surprise.

"Me… Megumi-san! I didn't…uh? What are you doing this for?"

The whole kitchen was filled with food and articles in such quantities that the boy had maybe never seen in his life before, to the point that some had even been scattered on the floor for lack of space. Deliciously sweet smells floated in the air, and Megumi was kneeling in front of a table, giving shape to balls of ohagi paste. As soon as she saw Kenji and heard his exclamation, she smirked in a way that he found distressingly similar to Hiko's.

"The baby Kenji is going to be sixteen tomorrow," she said, without lifting an eye from her ohagi. "So we will have to do something to celebrate his birthday, especially since he wasn't here in his last one."

The young man stopped in his tracks, and felt the colour coming to his cheeks.

"My… birthday?" he hesitated. "I…"

"You didn't remember," she finished for him. "Not even through all our hints. Well! Better late than never, isn't it?"

Kenji was plainly overwhelmed. Not only had he forgotten everything about his birthday, but he had also almost forgotten too about the devastation of the previous one, and even about the year in-between. In fact, plenty of things had just been erased from his mind by the strange routine of his life of the previous thirty days.

"You had planned a celebration? And you... are making the food?"

Megumi left another ball on top of the already well-grown ohagi mountain, and smiled. Now that Kenji looked closer at her, already used to the shadows of the kitchen, he could notice a few wrinkles on her finely sculptured face, and some grey hairs in the thick black cascade that fell over her shoulders. It was curious… when he had been a child, and even when he grew up, it had been impossible for him to think that she could grow old, or that she could hide anything behind her self-sufficient smile, her sarcasms and her beauty. Now, however, it seemed to him as if she was suddenly… tired.

"We will go to see the fall of the cherry-tree petals," she informed him. "It will be us, though Yahiko invited Yutaro and Outa as well. Outa was very surprised when he knew you had returned… he says that you haven't gone to visit him even once."

"True…" Kenji muttered in a guilty tone, trying to pace around the kitchen. Sooner even that what he had expected, though, he found his foot inside a pot of sweet confiture, and cursed. "Ouch! What the…? Oh, sorry, Megumi-san. I… just came to leave this tea cup here."

"Then leave it wherever you can and leave before you smash everything to pieces," the woman grumbled. "Sheesh, who would have thought that you would be like your mother! And don't forget to clean your tabi; I'm not planning on cleaning the house _again _anytime soon."

"Sorry, Megumi-san," he muttered once more. As he was already about to leave, he stopped on the threshold, and turned back again for a fleeting moment. "And thank you."

The woman raised a pair of puzzled eyes from her work.

"Thank me?"

"Because of… well, I was thinking the other day…" Surprisingly enough, to get those words out of his system was more difficult than what Kenji had expected, maybe because he wasn't used to speak like that. "You have your work in Aizu… and it should have been a great inconvenience for you to leave it all behind for so long. Thank you for coming here and helping us, and for taking care of my parents."

The woman looked somewhat pensive for a moment. Only once she had picked some more paste to do another ohagi she started to relax, and then her mouth curled into an approving smile.

"It looks as if even the most unwanted delays had a purpose in the end," she commented. "Even if it's for turning baby Kenji into something else, don't you think?"

The young man suppressed a grumble, and left the kitchen at a quick pace.

* * *

When the gates of the dojo opened at last, Kenji had been trying for a while to discover if his father had been told about tomorrow's party before he had been. This, as always, was no easy thing, since the man, when he was at his best brain capacity, presented a persistent obsession with not letting anyone know _anything_. Probably a side-effect of the times he had spent in China (doing _what _Kenji hadn't still guessed), or maybe even an excess of precaution triggered by the intermittent awareness of being in a state of disadvantage in what respected to secrets and inner information. If there was something that no one could deny, it was that Himura Kenshin - Himura Shinta now, as his mother called him - was _still_ a very private person….or at least he tried.

"Hello! Have you had any problems?" Kaoru called from the gate. The younger boys were already running and pushing each other outside between laughs, while the older gathered around Yahiko to ask him some question. Kaoru had talked many times about splitting the classes in two groups, one by morning with her and one in the afternoon with Yahiko, but now, Kenji supposed that this was out of the question. She could still teach, but not alone.

_Unless…_

"No, we're just fine!" he answered. As she got closer to them, he crossed his arms and cocked his head to the side. "Why didn't you tell me that tomorrow we'll have a party?"

"Oh…We wanted you to guess," she explained with a sheepish grin. There were large beads of sweat on her forehead, and her clothes were wet to the point of becoming almost a second skin. Kenji was suddenly aware of at least two of the older boys throwing long glances at her, and felt like getting up and punching them. When she got past him and kissed Kenshin's forehead, though, the guys retreated a bit to whisper something in their nearest companion's ears, and he relaxed.

_What a waste, _he thought, somewhat irately. _I'm sure they're thinking that._

"Megumi started a revolution in the kitchen this morning," he commented when he saw them leave. "I don't know how we will be able to have lunch."

"Oh, it's easy," his mother replied. "Yahiko will invite us to a restaurant. Won't you, Yahiko?"

"What?" An outraged voice came out immediately from the group of people that were still at the gates of the dojo. "When exactly did I agree to such a thing?"

"You didn't," Kaoru told him with a smart grin. "That's why I was asking you now."

Mumbling an expletive, Yahiko walked out from the circle that started to disperse behind him.

"Oh, all right, all right… But don't get used! I'm not bathing in money, precisely. And remember I'm having a kid this year…"

The dojo master chuckled, and got past her family with a last brush to Kenshin's red hair.

"Thank you, Yahiko, you're my favourite student! And, now you're speaking about bathing… I should invite Megumi and get arranged! Oh, and you too, Kenji. What is this that you have on that right tabi of yours? Kenshin, please, stay with Yahiko… we're back in a minute!"

As Kaoru and a still somewhat stunned Kenji disappeared behind the shoji of the house, and the last students crossed the gate that lead to the street, Yahiko shrugged his shoulders, and sat down besides Kenshin.

"Kaoru can also be quite foxy, huh?" he commented in a confidential tone. The red-haired man turned towards him, his attention attracted by the sound of his voice.

"Now, we're going to have a meal in a restaurant," the samurai continued, after receiving an encouraging nod. "And tomorrow it's Kenji's birthday."

"Birthday…" Kenshin muttered in a strange tone. For a moment, Yahiko had a sensation, as if the older man was shaken by this information, and there was something akin to sadness… or was it relief in his tone?

Of course, Kenshin had known about it since days ago. Even if he forgot about it periodically.

"Then, do you still agree to what we decided?" he asked. "The reverse blade… remember?"

"Oh…" The light of recognition grew in the red-haired man's eyes. "Reversed blade…Yes. I agree."

Yahiko smiled, and crossed his arms over his knees to rest his head on his hands. It was beginning to be really warm under the sun in spring.

"Fine, then. Hiko told me that he was good, and I see it myself. I think… hmm… that he has become quite a man already, don't you think?"

The older man stretched his hand, and rested reflexively over Yahiko's shoulder. The samurai felt a shiver creep across his body as he was able to feel the bony touch, and the nauseatingly sweet smell of blood, but he did not pull back or flinch. Kenshin did not deserve less.

"A man…" he mused aloud with a smile. "Oh, I'm happy…"

* * *

The meal went gaily, if slowly, as Kenshin needed plenty of time to eat, plenty of time to reach the place and plenty of time to leave it. Fortunately, for once he didn't have a pain fit in all day, though Kaoru was not able to cease worrying about that aspect until he was safely tucked inside his bed for his afternoon nap. Then, Yahiko could return to his house at last, to have a short break before he went to teach in other dojos, and the day continued peacefully for the rest of the people at the Kamiya house.

"I'm going to read outside.," Megumi announced, when Kaoru, Kenji and Kenshin were already installed in the sitting room at sundown. "I can't believe I haven't been able to finish this book yet because of you noisy bunch."

"Bring the lamp with you, Megumi-san," Kaoru advised. She was sewing a yukata, that she now left for a moment on her lap. "The sun will set soon."

"Oh, I will return then," the doctor reassured her. The Himura family watched her leave, and close the shoji noiselessly behind her graceful figure.

"She's becoming almost like someone of our family," Kenji mused aloud. Kaoru turned her glance towards him, surprised at his words.

"Megumi-dono…" Kenshin intervened. "She is very kind."

"I talked with her this morning and…"

As Kenji was in the middle of his sentence, his eyes suddenly widened, and he left the rest in the air. Kaoru frowned, and let her labour rest on her lap once more.

"What's the matter, Kenji?" she asked. "Anyone coming?"

"It's… It's…" The boy looked excited. In a quick motion, he jumped to his feet, and rushed towards the shoji. "It's Shishou! And he's not alone!"

"Hiko-san?" Kaoru was more puzzled than ever. "He's _here_?"

"Shishou," Kenshin muttered, lifting his glance as if to underline his son's words.

"Kaoru-san!" Megumi's voice came from outside. "You have visitors!"

Unable to wait a single second more, now with his mother at his heels, Kenji slid the shoji open. The spectacle that awaited them was to leave them breathless, and for a while they could do nothing but gape.

"But who is here, my stupid student in person! Have you lost your tongue, boy?" Hiko's unmistakeable voice scolded him. The old man was standing in the centre of the yard, with his white mantle and his prized jug of sake in his right hand. On one of his flanks, Megumi was shaking her head, and fanning herself with her unfinished book. And, on the other…

"Kaoru-san! Kenji-chan! Did we arrive in time for the party?"

Kaoru spent some moments thunderstruck at the vision, and then rushed forwards with her arms extended to meet her dear ninja friends from Kyoto. Misao and Aoshi were there, looking weary from their long travel.

"What… you heard…?"

"He told us," Aoshi informed, pointing at Hiko with his head. "And so we have come."

"So now it's time for a mushy reunion at the gates of the house," Hiko grumbled, walking towards the place where Kenji stood. "About time… Well, stupid student, where is your older counterpart?"

Slowly, Kenji's lips started to curve into a smile, and he pointed inside.

"It's wonderful," he grinned. "I… I didn't think you would bring enough sake!"

(to be continued)


	8. Chapter Seven: The Fall Of The Petals, I

**

* * *

Notes: **(Some more at the end of the chapter). Well, at last I could update. I had the draft of this chapter ready since long ago, but, as I was feeling extremely well and proud of myself after just finishing my second year of Classic Philology I didn´t want to get depressed again SO soon. In the end, it seems it wasn´t THAT bad…though, then again, maybe I was just half asleep on the two nights I spent correcting it. I´m half dead after partying all weekend like a stupid eighteen-year-old. (Oh, surprise…if that´s _exactly_ what I am!)

After this chapter, we´re exactly at three from the end. I thank all my reviewers very much for following it to this point! ;)

**Eclipse**

**Chapter Seven: The Fall of the Petals, I**

She had suddenly found herself alone, walking aimlessly through a deserted plain. A faint, rosy glow announcing the dawn was beginning to filter through the branches of the trees, but no human voice, no animal, not even the song of birds welcomed its arrival. Silence was heavy and absolute, as if the world had died that night, and for a moment she thought that she could feel the ghastly scent of its putrefaction mingled with the humid smell of the plants she left in her wake.__

Kaoru crossed a group of trees that projected misshapen shadows on the ground at her feet, and stopped dead in place with a shiver. In front of her, a strange wooden symbol rose over the sterile earth, and she could feel an unknown threat in its shape. It was made of two beams, crossed like, like…

_...His scar…_

Snapping into some kind of alert at this thought, Kaoru resumed her walk at a brisk pace, almost running in her efforts to get away from the place. Still, as soon as she had started she felt a sudden explosion of pain in her legs, and fell next to a cross that looked exactly like the one she had seen before. Her urgency became almost terror now, and she struggled to get to her feet once more, but the only thing that she saw when she tried to lift her head were similar crosses springing from everywhere, surrounding her menacingly. (1) She tried to shout, but her voice was died in her mouth.

_She was in a field of graves._

It would be impossible for her to remember afterwards how many times she had stumbled, how many times she had got up again in her mad run among the symbols of the dead. The field seemed interminable, infinite, and her mind was about to drown in horrible images of an interminable massacre. At last, unable to stand it anymore, hearing the shouts of the victims ringing in her ears and seeing their blood spilled on the ground, she fell to her knees and stayed there motionless, as one more corpse without a grave.

Who could have buried all those people? Whoever had done that should have gone mad afterwards, she thought as she let some dust run through the crevices of her fingers. The wood was just as new in all the crosses she had encountered, so it was evident that they had all died at the same time. A sudden death for countless people…

Almost inadvertently, the earlier images of the massacre began to slide inside her brain again, more vivid than ever. She could see their faces, distorted by fear, the mad run towards safety quenched in a river of blood, a group of women slaughtered while protecting a child…

But then, while she was immersed in those crazy hallucinations, a strange sound reached her ears, and snapped her awake from the sick lethargy. It was a _real _sound, not like the screams that pounded against her skull from within, and it had come from somewhere near her. Kaoru mustered her forces, to get up and have a look at the place again.

_What…?_ she muttered to herself, puzzled. Some metres away from where she was, there were three white stones lined besides each other over three more mounds of earth. Behind them, there were three crosses, and then, still behind them, nothing more. It was the end of the field, apparently... and the sound that she had heard seemed to come from there. Now that she could examine it more carefully, she realised that it was some kind of convulsive, irregular but soft noise, as if someone was…

_…crying?_

Kaoru started to walk in that direction, now heedless to the sights that had almost driven her mad before. There was just one purpose inside her mind now, and it was discovering the person who was uttering those sounds. Once she had had managed to pass the site of the three stones, however, she had to stop dead in her tracks, and she suppressed a gasp of surprise at the spectacle offered in front of her eyes.

Whatever she had expected to find moments ago, somehow, had not been quite that, she had to confess to herself. It was a boy… nothing more than a very young, small and skinny boy dressed in dirty - bloodied?- clothes. He was lying on the ground with his back to her, and, though in silence, his shoulders were convulsing periodically in a strange kind of eerie noiseless sobs in which he seemed to be rather swallowing his grief than throwing it out. Kaoru saw him let go of a handful of earth that he had wrung from the ground, and realised that he had left it painted in blood.

_The hands…_

He had… buried all those people?

The first sunray crossed the thin mist of the morning softly, and got caught in the long and brilliant red locks of the little mourner. Shaken to the core, the woman fell to her knees in front of him, and extended both her arms in his direction. Her emotions were running loose now, threatening to suffocate her with the struggles raging inside her soul. Comfort him, heal him, help him, have him…

_…Keep him next to her, before he could…_

Was he slipping away?

"Shinta..." she muttered, pulling him into an embrace. The boy's body remained unresponsive, but he lifted a pair of teary yet serene violet eyes towards her. In them, she could see a deep, already mastered grief, and also a profound and quiet inner peace that had never been in them before.

"It all started here, many years ago," (2) a soft voice murmured in her ear. "But now, at last… it will end definitely"

Seized by a sudden, instinctive fit of terror, Kaoru intensified her embrace, and opened her mouth to scream with all her forces.

"SHINTA!"

* * *

The first thing that she was able to feel when she woke up from her tumultuous dream was the familiar smell of decay and blood filling her nostrils. Then, as soon as her eyes snapped open in fear, she saw another pair of eyes terrifiedly searching for focus, and felt a struggle under the sheets of her bed. She returned to reality immediately, just in time to pull her upset husband in a calming embrace.

_It had been a dream. Only a dream._

"Shinta..." she whispered in his ear. The man had obviously been awakened by her shout, and, realising in his clouded mind that she was in some sort of danger, he had tried to gather himself and help her. His inability to do so, like all the other times before, was what had left him in such a state of helplessness and despair. "I'm all right. You don't have to worry... Please."

"K… Kaoru… Kaoru…!" he cried, unable to stop. The woman kissed his shaking head, and caressed his stiffened back until she felt an almost imperceptible relaxation in his limbs, and then she buried her face on his chest. The smell was horrible, but she didn't mind. He was here. He was here, and that was all what mattered….

All that…

"Kaoru…," he muttered, leaning against the warmth of her body with a smile of relief. For a moment, his eyes fluttered open, but in their newfound tranquillity she discovered that she could nowhere find the same look of inner peace that had unchained her irrational terror, back in her dreams. She only saw the usual weariness, and a deep, deep exhaustion in their violet orbs.

_Selfish._

Kaoru rested her head against the pillow, and cried her heart out while softly rocking her husband back to sleep.

* * *

Well, it really looked as if someone was intending Kenji's birthday to be some grand thing that wouldn't be forgotten in ages, Yahiko thought grumpily as he and Tsubame were walking down an avenue towards the riverside. That night had been one of the most awful nights in his life. Then, at dawn, to make things even better, Yutaro had sent them a message saying that he had gladly accepted the invitation in his name and in the name of his fiancée, who had gracefully postponed the visit to her cousin that she had arranged long ago. He shuddered just to imagine how could things turn out with THAT woman in the middle… and to think that it had been _him _who had invited her was just too much.

"Tsubame," he called. The woman who was walking at his side seemed to jump out of a distracted musing at his voice, and turned towards him with an inquiring glance.

"Yes?"

"Are you feeling better now?"

"Uh? Oh… yes," she reassured him with a somewhat tired smile. Her eyes still bore the marks of lack of sleep, and she looked a bit pale, but he hoped it would pass once she received an adequate dose of morning air, food and laughter with their friends. Last night she had given him a real fright, vomiting so much that he ended up by believing she would miscarry again. Nightmares, nausea… three months and a half of pregnancy, and her belly was swollen as if it had been five or six. Though Megumi had denied it, he was still worried that she could have a problem.

"Don't worry," she added, a faint blush colouring her cheeks. An old woman dressed in a yellow kimono with a basket passed them by at that moment, and they stopped briefly to answer her cheerful greeting with a bow. "I feel… it's all normal again. The baby is safe."

Yahiko nodded, doing an effort to give her an encouraging smile.

"I know. "

_Now, if he only could be as sure…_

In the last month, he thought, Tsubame had definitely surprised him with her behaviour. Of course, he had always known that she had some strength deep inside, but women were strange creatures… they hid it so well, almost as if they were ashamed of it, and then endured the most hard things as if it was their routine. She, a woman for which child-bearing presented plenty of additional problems, had got pregnant in the most terrible period of their lives, and he not heard her yet complain even once about her situation or fear for her life. It was he who had been afraid, who _was _afraid of losing everyone he loved, the powerful warrior who had wanted to be strong and was failing miserably in every aspect. Right next to him, the people who were for him the father he had never met and the older sister he had never had, were inexorably deteriorating, and it was _she_ who had been able to make him see that his resignation was nothing more than concealed rage, and that he hadn't been able to cease blaming them for it. She had helped him come to terms with it, and comforted him whether he had wanted it or not whenever she thought (and damn her, she always got it right!) that he needed it. And, meanwhile, she was suffering herself, and risking death on her own, but accepting it as calmly as any other eventuality of life! Yahiko was still astonished to see her so unscarred and unscathed by everything that was happening around them and to them, and more than slightly frustrated with himself at the same time. Who would have thought that _he, _a samurai warrior, would need…?

"And, do you know what, Yahiko? I… I feel it growing."

"What?" Widening his eyes, the young man turned towards his wife. "Growing? You can… feel such a thing?"

Tsubame chuckled at his surprise, and made a timid move to hold his hand.

"Yes," she whispered. "_I _can." Her laugh was then subdued into a quiet smile, and she lost her eyes in the distance. A soft wind was beginning to blow over the cherry tree flowers, whispering songs among fallen petals. "Everything will go well, you see. I've never been surer of anything in my life."

"Is this some parody of that time when I said that no one would die?" he joked with a wry gesture.

"You were right back then," she smiled. "Weren't you?"

"Uh? Well, I…"

Before he could ever finish his sentence, however, a deafening clatter of hooves started to increase its intensity at a great speed behind them. Tsubame's face turned pale again in the sudden realisation of the danger she was in, and Yahiko, taking her by the arm, hurried instinctively towards the other side of the road.

"Hey!" he shouted angrily to the rider, ready to gift his ears with some choice words. As the man stopped and turned back towards him, though, and the woman who sat behind him did the same, the insults died in the samurai's mouth for a whole second of surprise.

"Damn you, Yutaro!" he growled, as soon as he had recovered his voice. "Do you know you were about to trample over a pregnant woman, MY pregnant woman at that, you jackass? You and your fucking…"

"Oh, my God!" a heavily accented voice thundered, overwhelming all he was saying or going to say for a long time. "You almost ran her down, you idiot! You scared her and frightened her baby, you animal! When people don't know how to ride correctly they keep their horse at home, at least in my country!"

Tsubame and Yahiko stayed frozen in place, while Franziska von Ossum-Bösinghoven stepped down the horse with a jump and walked towards them, followed by a _very _red and troubled Yutaro trying to give her explanations in her language. Slowly, a pair of smiles started to fight their way in their faces, and by when their friends had approached them they were almost unable to hold back their urge to laugh.

"Poor, poor girl!" the Prussian woman exclaimed, pulling Tsubame into a hug. "Are you feeling all right? Is the baby well?"

"Y… yes," the other woman could utter at last. "I'm fine. Re… really!"

Yahiko could not keep himself from sending a mocking glance to Yutaro behind the women's backs, to which his friend answered with a furious gesture.

"In serious trouble, huh?" he teased. "You _really_ should learn to ride one of these days…"

"Shut up!" Yutaro almost shouted. "Franziska, dear…"

The tall blonde woman turned back in a brusque motion, and started to say something in her language. Though he could not understand a single word, Yahiko decided by her tone that she was giving her fiancé an indication, if not an order. With a last chuckle, he ran to retrieve his wife, and passed an arm around her shoulder.

"Fran… uh… I've thought that it could be good if Tsubame came with me on the horse to the appointed place. She could be tired, and…."

_No!_ Yahiko thought instinctively, before the blonde samurai could even finish his sentence. _Never!_

"I am feeling well," the woman declined in a shy tone. Her husband sighed in authentic relief at those words. He didn't mind that Tsubame got on a horse with Yutaro , but to walk all the way with the gaijin woman would have been a horrible death. "Besides, aren't we at almost a hundred metres from the place?"

"She has a point, you know," Yutaro agreed. "We can… well, we can walk the last metres together, can't we?"

Franziska looked dubious. "Are you sure, Tsubame?" she asked first, her blue eyes travelling across each of the others. When the woman nodded, she shrugged her shoulders with a sigh.

"Let's go then, dear," she decided, and immediately took her by the hand to pull her in front. "But if you're feeling bad, just tell me, right?"

"Stop laughing, you idiot!" the blond samurai threatened Yahiko behind them. "She has her own customs and her own ways, okay?"

"How does it feel?" his friend asked, raising his eyebrow. Yutaro looked at him suspiciously, and rolled the reins of the horse in his hand.

"Feel what?"

"To be whipped," Yahiko clarified, crouching to dodge a punch out of instinct. The reversed blade that he had sheathed and attached to his back gave a sharp twang at his brusque movement. Yutaro's horse neighed in surprise, but fortunately it did not move.

"Oh, don't be ashamed," Franziska reassured Tsubame as both turned back to witness the two men's exploits. "In my country, there are people like that, too."

"Should I call the police?" an innocent voice asked behind them.

"Mind your… Uh…? Outa, damn you (3)!" Yahiko cried, stopping in mid-strike as soon as he recognised Sanosuke's brother. "You are already here!"

"Just in time. Want me to join?" the young man inquired smugly. He had grown very tall in the last years, and now he looked thinner than ever, but both Yahiko and Yutaro knew very well how strong he was behind that appearance. After a brilliant kendo career, though, he had decided that it did not suit him, and continued his insatiable search for new experiences until this day. An amazing mind hungry and thirsty of life, there was no place in Tokyo where Higashidani Outa hadn't been to, and no person he hadn't met yet. Yahiko knew it was only a matter of time before he would flee the country like his brother, and felt sympathy for the poor foreigners the day that this should happen. Though good-natured himself, he seemed to attract trouble wherever he went. Maybe this was partly the fault of his weird behaviour, for he could perfectly pass as a total village blockhead at one minute and at the next behave like the craziest genius in the world. He could have fun in a brawl as well as writing, or (or so Yahiko thought sometimes) falling from a rooftop as well. In other words… he was totally and absolutely cracked.

"Writing a serenade to the beautiful cherry petals?" Yutaro jested. Outa shrugged his nose.

"No, thanks," he grumbled. "Look at all those people doing exactly _that_."

Yahiko looked right and left, and his friends did the same, but all they could to see was the riverside full of cherry trees in bloom, and some groups of people sitting while they ate, unpacked their food or talked among themselves. Not a single one was writing anything.

"Excuse me," Yutaro started, "but I don't…"

"Everybody goes to see the cherry petals falling. Why don't we go _somewhere _else?" Outa insisted. "I'm developing a phobia of cherry petals falling."

"We come here for little Kenji's birthday. He's the one who decides," the incombustible Franziska von Ossum-Bössinghoven explained. "And, besides, cherry trees are _very_ beautiful!"

"And besides, let's take a seat _now_ or we will lose all the best places," Yahiko sighed, pulling Tsubame with him. Definitely, he thought again, that party would hardly lack anything at all.

Except maybe a place for cover.

* * *

"He arrived ill?" Aoshi arched an eyebrow. Kenji gave a deep breath, and leaned against the closed shoji of their bedroom.

"Yes. His condition has improved tremendously in this month and a half. Maybe because… well, I suppose that here, he's surrounded by people who take care of him, and it's very different from China overall." His eyes took a serious expression. "He didn't have good experiences there."

"He's just _too _stubborn for his own good," a lively, mildly irritated voice interrupted them from inside the room. "He could have stayed here, being nursed as he should. We all told him that, but nooo, he just _had _to get into a mess that was too big for him in a foreign continent where nobody could care less about whether he was sick or healthy. Bravo, Himura!"

"Are you ready, Misao?" Aoshi asked, cutting the awkward silence that had arisen after his wife's words.

"Not yet! You guys are too hasty, and I want to do it well this time!" she answered. Kenji could not help rolling his eyes at that, and, for a second, he allowed a brief smile to cross his face. In spite of marrying and having two children, the little ninja had always struck him as the most unwomanly woman he had met, much more than even his mother. He was having serious difficulties imagining her with a fancy dress… and, above all, "too hasty" was a word that he had never thought he would hear from her lips at any moment.

"She's right, I told him not to go," a deep, thoughtful voice interrupted his musings. Surprised, the young man turned back his head towards the Okashira of the Oniwabanshuu… and not for the first time he thought that there was definitely something weird in him that day.

It was not that the man had experienced strong shifts of mood or anything, something which could not actually be said about his wife (last evening she had passed from talkative and cheerful to strangely silent, and this morning, to Kenji's surprise, she was talkative again). But since he had seen Kenshin for the first time, last evening upon his arrival, he seemed to lack at least part of his usual stoicity. It seemed as if he was in doubt or pondering something whenever he spoke, if he spoke at all… and there was also a somewhat gloomy air about him that was bothering Kenji.

"But he didn't listen," the young man nodded, shrugging his shoulders. "That's what everybody more or less says. I wasn't there, you know, so I suppose it's true."

A pair of inquisitive ice blue eyes met his, filled with a sudden appreciation.

"You have changed," Aoshi stated. The young man shifted his weight from a leg to another, attacked by a sudden feeling of uneasiness,

"Well…everybody tells me that too," he whispered at last. Frantically, his mind began to search for words that could explain his issue as little embarrassingly as possible, but, to his relief, Aoshi did not press the issue. Still, the bad feeling did not leave Kenji's mind wholly, and for a while he cocked his head with a frown. Sometimes, he couldn't help but wonder…

_Was he supposed to feelashamed?_

"Right now, I'm only…glad that he's so much better," he finished in the end, with an hesitant smile. "And that he has fulfilled his promise of being home for my birthday. He looks happy, and I suppose that this is all that matters."

"_Happy_…"

The word came in a strange tone, detached but still full of something that to the young man sounded like an unknown sort of emotion. Curious, Kenji turned his head towards the ninja again, and this time he was able to catch a full-fledged absent look in his eyes by surprise. It was not frequent that anybody could say that he had seen Aoshi lowering his guard, and it felt somewhat… awkward.

_After all, he considered him to be "the strongest warrior", and for a while even wished to be killed by him, _he mused with a frown._ I wonder what he does think now…_

But who could ever know what Shinomori Aoshi was thinking?

"Attention, you two! I'm coming out!" a voice in the bedroom announced. Kenji dropped his sombre thoughts in order to smile, and took his weight away from the shoji just in time before it was slid open in a brusque movement.

"Surprise!" Misao exclaimed with a self-satisfied grin, showing her new outfit proudly. She was certainly… looking different, the young man thought in the middle of a small gasp. A long, sky-blue Western robe wrapped her slender body displaying its charms as Kenji had never seen them before, and its long skirts decorated with green flowers were so long - or were _too _long for her, he rectified with a grin - that they covered her feet. She wore no hat, as Franziska von Ossum-Bösinghoven did, but her dark hair was tied in a braid with a blue ribbon and two white flowers.

"My, that you look… funny, Misao-san!" he exclaimed, unable to keep back for a moment longer a chuckle at the absolutely uncanny spectacle of the little, tomboyish woman dressed like the tall and languid foreign women that he could see walking the streets of Tokyo. It gave him the distinct and disturbing impression that she was trying to disguise herself as one of them, but failed no matter what since her face, and the womanly elegance of her movements (or rather lack of) were purely… Misao, and there was nothing she could do about this. "Are you really going to the party like that?"

"Misao, you will spoil the dress if you sit on the humid grass," Aoshi added with his usual reflexive touch in a quiet voice. The woman's face began to get redder and redder.

"So that's all you two have to say? Something _nice _would be beyond your manly capabilities, wouldn't it?" she thundered. "I was saving this dress for a very special occasion, and that was _your birthday, _Kenji!"

"Calm down, dear." Her husband gave her a conciliating glance. "We didn't imply that we didn't like it."

"It's very nice, very nice, really," Kenji nodded, before a punch or a kick could send him to the other side of the room. Once again, he thought that Nature had been wise for not making most women strong; they were truly unpredictable. Pity that the exceptions seemed to surround _him_… "I'm very honoured of your choice of... uh, wearing it on my party first."

Misao suppressed a grumble, and walked in a stormy stride towards the shoji of the kitchen.

"I'm going to show it to the women, and get _some_ appreciation," she announced as she disappeared behind it.

"She's …uh, she's in a funny mood today, isn't she?" Kenji muttered to Aoshi, wiping some drops of sweat from his forehead. The older man bit his lower lip, and shook his head.

"She's not feeling well," he said, before leaving him alone to go after his wife.

* * *

"Surprise!"

Kaoru and Megumi, who were finishing the packing of the food in the kitchen, were just about to drop everything they were holding at the sight suddenly displayed in front of their eyes.

"So, what do you say?" Misao asked with a smile. "Like it or not?"

Megumi, the first who was able to react, swallowed deeply, and curved her lips into a smile.

"How elegant!" she whistled. "Did you buy it in Kyoto?"

"Y… yes. You're not usually seen with such things, are you, Misao-chan?" Kaoru added with emphasis, as she returned to the world of the living after the great shock. "It was a …surprise."

"That's what I intended," the younger woman said with a wink. "Can I help?"

"When a lady is in her best clothes, there are plenty of things that she cannot do anymore," Megumi grinned. "Besides, we were almost finished, anyway."

"Oh, well…" Misao shrugged her nose, and turned back to look at Aoshi, who had just entered. "We go outside and wait?"

"We're out in an instant," Kaoru informed. "But tell Kenji to come in a couple of minutes and help. Is Hiko-san still out?"

Aoshi nodded.

"He's with Himura."

A short silence rose spontaneously among the people who crowded the kitchen. For a moment, Kaoru could not help but wonder if they were thinking the same about the old master, and the unusual trip he had made just to see someone who was changing at a vertiginous pace in front of their eyes.

_At least he's lucky to have found him as he's now, and not as he was a month ago_, she thought, maybe just to encourage herself.

"Let's go, then," Aoshi decided, sliding the shoji open. Misao followed him after sending a last furtive glance to the other two women's direction.

"Sheesh," Megumi sighed, as she returned to her initial task. "Who would have thought that we would be so many people at that party?"

"The more, the merrier," Kaoru answered, hurrying to help her.

"The little weasel is really the best to cheer up things at the moment," the other woman continued. "Don't you think?"

Kaoru's eyes were lost in the distance, pensively.

"Well, yes. But I think that… she's not well, herself."

"Uh? What do you mean?" Megumi gave her a curious glance, and stopped for a moment. "Do you think she's feigning her good mood?"

"Not exactly," The younger woman shrugged her shoulders, lowering her voice almost imperceptibly. "I have known her for very long, and I've remarked some things about her. When something happens that affects people around her… Oh, but this is really preposterous of me! I can't believe I'm trying to read people who are not even present." Ashamed, Kaoru shook her head with vehemence, and redoubled her efforts to get a very big bag inside a basket. After some minutes of diligent work, however, she stopped again, and fixed a strangely intent pair of eyes in the doctor. "Megumi-san… Kenshin is in a really good state today, isn't he?"

"What?" The older woman could barely hide her surprise at the sudden change of topic. "Yes... I'd say that mentally, he's at his best since he came back from the continent. Why?"

"He looks happy and full of energy, as if he had a renewed wish to live, doesn't he? He talks to me, to you, to Yahiko, to Kenji, and now he's in a conversation with Hiko-san. I have heard him laugh and talk from inside…"

Megumi frowned, shaking her head in reprobation. That had definitely sounded as if Kaoru _hadn_'t even heard her.

"Kaoru…" she started. "He's in a phase where his brain is… well, receiving all the blood that doesn't…"Her voice trailed off, as she felt a deep, subit dulling pain seizing her heart at the sight of the feverish hope in the other woman's eyes.

_Was she… hiding something from her?_

"If he's feeling well," she said at last, in a more determined tone, "you should be happy for it. So get going." Taking a couple of baskets in both of her hands, she walked towards the open door, but as she closed it behind her she had enough time to leave them on the floor, and wipe away a tear that was sliding down her cheek.

"This is killing me," she muttered to herself, kneeling to lift her burden before Kenji could find her in that undignified state.

* * *

"Kenji?" Hiko took another gulp of his sake, this time without even bothering to offer it to Kenshin first. "Definitely the second most stubborn fool I've trained in my life. You know who's the first… right?"

The red-haired man nodded slowly to that question that Hiko would never have asked in normal circumstances. If it had been because he had understood, or simply because he wanted him to continue, the old master could not know.

"He did not listen. Yes, I can't deny he had aptitudes…" Scanning his surroundings, Hiko's voice shrunk to a somewhat lower tone. "More aptitudes than what you ever had, in fact. And this is not so bad."

This, on the contrary, seemed to be clearly understood by Kenshin, whose lips curved into a smile. His eyes got lost in the distance for about a minute, and then he stared back at Hiko.

"Thank you for… keeping him safe," he whispered with a more serious expression. "I feared… well, I thought... you know…"

"I know, yes." The older man winced, and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder before he could start piling complicated thoughts and getting confused. Though he would never have dreamt of confessing it, their conversation was starting to affect him.

"Well," he tried to change the subject again instead, "as now you have at last returned from China, you can…"

Surprisingly enough, those words seemed to cause a complete emotional change in the sick man. Where before there had been slowness and confusion, now Hiko saw an urgent, feverish gleam, and a slight tremor of his hands.

"The letter," he muttered in a low tone. "Did you receive the letter?"

Knowing that a serious reassurance was all what Kenshin needed right now, the old man nodded first, and then let himself be lost for a while in his thoughts. It was surprising, how the events there had marked his former student that much that even now, in his peaceful house and surrounded by friends and family, he could still react as if he was still tangled in the middle of some international mess.

"And where…?"

"Just _calm _a bit, all right?" Hiko grumbled. Kenshin obeyed as if out of instinct, and laid back immediately. His old master smirked. "I gave it to your son. Kenji has it now."

"Kenji…," Kenshin muttered, in renewed worry. "But…"

"_But_ nothing. He has the right to know you. You're always withdrawing yourself from your family, you idiot, and they're the kind of people who don't take that well!"

Now, his stupid pupil had an absolutely guilty look on his face. Bravo, Hiko thought, so much for talking trivial subjects! When he had arrived, he had come decided not to mention anything about the information Kenshin had promised him while he was in China, or about Kenji's problems, or anything capable of breaking the shallow but comforting bubble of peace which was the only treasure that remained to him right now. His only intention had been to _see _him one last time, and put an end to the cycle that he had decided to start so many years ago after the massacre of a slave caravan. But he guessed that he was getting old, and that that was why things suddenly did not look so easy to do.

_Old…_

Hiko muttered a curse under his breath, not his first and most surely not his last regarding that delicate subject. He was not _supposed _to get old, ever! In the long years after the anything but orthodox passing of the succession technique, as he had coped with it in the quiet solitude of his mountain, he had often thought that dying young was a great part of what made a Hiten Mitsurugi master be what he was. Anyone could feel like a god, never being subject to the humiliation of being secretly unable to perform the most stressful techniques anymore… almost all techniques, in fact…, feeling the weight of his mantle over his shoulders augmenting each morning when he woke up, having to see the next successor, who once had been able to master the Ama Kakeru Ryu no Hirameki because of his triumphant will of living, fumbling to search for words with glassy eyes, _wanting _to die…

On the other hand, he realised, it was also true that all the previous Hiten Mitsurugi masters had lacked something in their perception of life. Something that, in a way, could make even this pitiful situation look like a twisted sublimation of the Hiten Mitsurugi generations, just at the abrupt end of the line.

**_He_**_ has__lived and felt more than all the rest of us put together, _he could not help but think, staring at the blue sky without clouds that loomed above their heads. Nah… was he feeling sad?

"Well, well, Kenshin..." he exclaimed, as he drank yet some more sake. His pupil stared at him in alert, but shook his head.

"Shinta," he corrected. Suddenly, he didn't even know why, Hiko felt the irrational need of having a good laugh.

"I never denied it was pretty," he chuckled. "So what, Shinta, are you ready for the party? We're leaving in some minutes, or so your wife said."

"I am ready."

Three words, so simple but pronounced with such a sudden, eerie determination made Hiko freeze for a second. Kenshin seemed to notice for once, and attempted a calming smile.

"I…" he started, as if to explain something. Then, however, his eyes widened suddenly, and before Hiko could even react he was doubling over himself, clutching his chest with a strange glance as he gasped for air.

"Kenshin!" In fractions of a second, the old swordsman knelt over him and laid his stiffened back over the wooden floor, holding him to wait until the attack passed. Little by little, the pale, wrinkled face started to relax once more, and the bandaged chest turned to heave up and down at a still quick but increasingly normal pace.

"Are you alright, Kenshin?" Hiko asked in concern. That glance…

"Thank you, thank… you," Kenshin gasped. His violet eyes were lifted again to search for his master's, filled with an indescribable feeling that Hiko did not know how to read.

"I was… suffocating." he explained. "No air… no breath… horrible. But…"

"But?"

The red-haired man joined his fingers, and pressed them against each other. His voice was lowered almost to a whisper, but in that moment it sounded as sure and direct as when he had been in full possession of his mental faculties.

"I didn't feel pain anymore."

Hiko turned back abruptly, shaking his head as he got up. Shinomori and the weasel, dressed in a strange outfit, were coming towards them from the other side of the yard, and he could hear Kaoru's loud voice behind the shoji shouting to Kenji that they could go out now. He turned back towards Kenshin, and dusted his mantle.

"Come, you idiot student," he said. "I will… carry you."

And for the first time in all his life, Hiko Seijuro the Thirteenth's voice failed him a bit.

(to be continued)

**(1)**Disclaimer: I have no idea on what did graves with crosses have to do in that scene, but I put it here because Watsuki drew them. Maybe he did it to connect with the Western audience, maybe he knows things that I do not know about rural customs of the Tokugawa era (Well, I mean, I´m SURE he does, but…), or maybe Kenshin is a closet Christian, after all. (Although let me doubt it). If some reader has an answer or a suggestion, I´d be glad to hear it.

**(2)**I know this wasn´t the beginning of Kenshin´s misfortunes, but it was of his life as a swordsman.

**(3)**Higashidani Outa isn´t an original character, he IS Sano´s brother in the manga. Only that I, uh, well…_developed _him a bit in weird directions. That´s what happens when you´re uninspired and begin to accept the random suggestions of your friends.


	9. Chapter Eight: The Fall Of The Petals, I...

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* * *

Note: **Mwahahaha. This is almost over! (When it´s really over I swear I´ll throw a party.) Only a short chapter and an epilogue to go! 

Thanks to all the reviewers and to Margit Rizka for wonderful beta.

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**Eclipse**

**Chapter Eight: The Fall of the Petals, II**

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"I've brought this cake, just in case that there was lack of food…"

"Uh?" Yahiko's eyes widened as he saw the enormous strawberry-and-almond flavoured work of art that Franziska was proudly displaying in front of them. For once, his voice didn't even sound forced. "It looks delicious!"

"Cooking complicated pastries is her hobby since she was very young," Yutaro explained with a wink. "You know… sometimes it can be useful."

"_Hobby_?" both Tsubame and Yahiko asked at the same time. The blond samurai could not help but laugh at their clueless faces.

"It's when…let's see, when a person puts a lot of work in something, but not in exchange for money or goods, just because he _wants _to," he explained.

Shocked, Yahiko fell back into his now usual stand of shaking his head dismissively.

"Those gaijin are crazy."

"I heard you!"

"You think you're one of them, at present?" he asked, feigning innocence.

Yutaro frowned. "You know perfectly what I mean! And it's _very _normal of you, by the way, to bring a fucking real sword to a birthday party!"

"I don't understand…" While both men continued their argument, poor Franziska walked towards the mantle they had put for her on the grass next to Tsubame, and sank on it slowly with a lost expression. "Why do they talk so quickly, and get excited over nothing?"

Tsubame gave her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.

"They have been… friends for a very long while," she tried to explain to her. "Sometimes it's difficult to understand what they're on about."

"Hey!" Both women lifted their glances to see the tall and already muddy figure of Outa, who had been hanging at the river for a while. "They're coming!"

"Are they?" Yahiko turned his back on Yutaro, and got up in a jump to scrutinise the horizon. "Oh, yes, they're… but…"

"What?" Yutaro asked. "What's that face all of a sudden?"

"Someone very big… It's Hiko!" Yahiko continued, ignoring him. "_Hiko! _What the heck is _he_ doing here, of all people? And… and… the weasel? No, I can't believe it!"

"Hello, people!!" Now, the eyes of everybody were clearly able to capture the strange sight of the little woman waving her hand to them in enthusiasm, while she tried to run through the grass with a dress that looked disturbingly alike to the one Franziska was wearing. Soon tired of the long skirts that got tangled on her legs whenever she walked at some speed, though, she had somehow managed to tie them up at one of the sides. "Did you find a good place?"

"The best," Yahiko answered. "We're all alone in this forgotten corner. But what are _you _doing here? And where are your kids?"

"We came with Hiko-san. The children are in Kyoto," she explained with a grin, pointing to the group that walked slowly behind her. Kenji and Aoshi came first, carrying huge quantities of food and looking in their direction. Then, there was Hiko's gigantic silhouette… and, over his back…

"Kenshin…" the young samurai muttered, as his features were for a moment taken by an expression of shock. Soon, however, it melted away in a somewhat nostalgic smile. "You're late."

"We had to prepare all the food, you morons!" a peeved Kenji protested energically. "And carry it, just for you!"

"And we didn't have any horses," Aoshi intervened, turning his face towards the place where Yutaro's dark steed was eating grass with a contented demeanour. "Though" he added in a lower voice, "it might have been practical to have at least one."

"I heard you, Shinomori," Hiko grumbled. Over his back, Kenshin stretched his neck to look at the people they had just met, and smiled in slow acknowledgement when he saw Yahiko. "I don't even feel his weight. Partly, of course, because of my natural strength as the thirteenth successor of the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu style…and partly because he never was the heavy type."

_Old boaster, _the young samurai couldn't help but think with a wry grin. Kenji rolled his eyes from behind, for which Kaoru sent him a reprobating glance. Side to side with her, Megumi smiled.

"Here, Kenshin, you will be fine with your back lying against that tree," Hiko said to the older red-haired man. "You _really _should have raised your son better."

"Hello," Yutaro got up now as well, followed by his fiancée. "I'm Tsukayama Yutaro, Kaoru's former student and assistant master. And this is my fiancée, Franziska von Ossum-Bösinghoven. She's foreign."

"Delighted to see you!" Encouraged by the introduction, the Prussian woman proceeded to hug and kiss an unsuspecting Misao, then Aoshi - who didn't do Kenji the favour of looking helpless, though he _might _ have felt like it -, then Hiko, who did not seem to mind it much, and then, before he even had the time to attempt an escape, she attacked him.

"Happy birthday, little Kenji!" she cried, pulling him into an embrace. "My, _sixteen_ years already! You're such a handsome little man!"

With the distinct impression that the whole world was laughing at him, Kenji muttered a disgruntled expression of his thanks, and managed to pull free with the excuse of helping to put things in order. From his new security, and while he exchanged some funny glances with Tsubame, he could witness the successive attacks on the people that remained, until the terrible woman stopped in front of his father.

"Himura-san, you look quite happy this morning!" she sang, doubling over to kiss him without spoiling her dress with the grass. Kenshin looked lost and shocked, but to Kaoru's relief he didn't make any brusque movements. Maybe his inner soul could still perceive and distinguish good intentions, at least in a sense.

"Kenji-kun," Tsubame tugged at his arm at that moment.

"Hello," the young man answered mechanically.

"Kenji-kun," she insisted. Now, he had to turn back and meet her face with an inquiring expression.

"What's the matter?"

"Your friend is over there."

"My..? Oh." Guilty, Kenji realised that he hadn't still tried to say a word to Outa since he had arrived. Standing up, he swallowed deeply and walked towards where he was sitting, a bit away from where the others were caught in merry conversation.

"Outa…" he began. As he got no answer, he continued. "I'm back, as you see."

The other man twisted his face in a perfectly achieved mask of surprised ignorance. "Who are you?"

"Please, no jokes now," Kenji protested to the symbol of evil on his friend's back. (1) "Look, when I came back my father and my mother were ill, and I've been with them most of the time until…"

"Give me your name and I'll offer you my services," Outa replied with a smile. Kenji almost growled in frustration. Of all the jackasses in the world….

"Okay, okay, I'm SORRY!" he shouted. Some people turned their faces to stare at him for a moment, but he paid no attention to them. "Is that what you wanted to hear?"

Outa continued chewing a weed placidly, though Kenji was now able to detect a slight expression of self-satisfied amusement growing in his face.

"You assume too much," he said. "And you're too impulsive. Sitting here for some hours to meditate while watching the harmonic circles that the fish draw while swimming in the river would be definitely good for your present state of mind."

Feeling his short temper evaporate with the last shreds of self-restraint Kenji threw a punch in his direction. Outa seemed to have been expecting it, and ducked before answering on his own. With a respective growl, both fell on the ground, struggling to gain the upper hand.

"Hey! Kaoru-san, your son has got into a fight with the roosterhead's brother!" a vibrant female voice reached their ears almost immediately. Both put all their forces in their last struggle, and then let it go as each one's strength projected the other to fall at a considerable distance from his opponent's body. Everybody was staring at them now.

"Kenji..!" Kaoru started, but in the middle of her shout she seemed to think the better of it and changed the tone of her voice. "I'm eh... glad you have revived your friendship so soon."

Franziska got closer to Tsubame, Misao and Megumi, and called surreptitiously for their attention.

"Uh, er… Is this _meant _to be positive?" she asked in a confused tone.

"Welcome to the world of moronic Japanese males," Megumi answered in a much higher voice. Yutaro threw her a dirty look, but before he could even say anything, Franziska pointed at him with a dangerous smile.

"Right, right! _He_'s like that, very often!"

Misao and Megumi started to giggle, and the man turned his back of them, defeated.

"That was a good one," Misao breathed as her laughter started to subside.

"And he deserves it," Franziska added with no sense of loyalty whatsoever. "You should have seen him earlier in the morning, when he almost ran over Tsubame with his horse. And later, he got into another fight with Yahiko-san…"

"Those two are always fighting and kicking each other for stupidities," Misao sighed. "Hey, I used to do so as well, but I grew up!"

Franziska's eyes widened again.

"You…?"

"Better _not _ask," Megumi counselled her smugly.

* * *

About half an hour later, the party members - or some of them - had at last managed sucessfully to put a bit of order in the whole scenario. The cloth was already set in the middle and, on top of it, the different types of food and drink had been arranged around Franziska's cake. In a somewhat retired place, there were some jars of sake waiting to be opened, and the people were sitting in groups, gaily lost in jokes and conversation.

Kenshin, as the one with less freedom of movements, had been spontaneously turned into some kind of centre of the party. Sitting with his back against the tree, mostly keeping quiet, his mouth was curved into a pleased smile that now and then, when nobody was paying attention, contracted a bit in tension, while his violet eyes were always wide open and watching everything that went on around him with full attention. Kaoru was sitting at his left, following his expressions and his evolutions with loving concern and giving him frequent conversation. On his other side, at his right, the true protagonist of the event had taken his place while he was immersed in an animated conversation with his friend Outa. Megumi was somewhat apart from them with Misao, Franziska and the pregnant Tsubame, all four sitting on another cloth that had been set there to protect certain expensive dresses, and Yahiko and Yutaro seemed to be taking care of having a certain distance between the women and themselves. Hiko was near to Kenji and Kenshin, holding his inseparable jar of sake, and Aoshi was beside him, keeping rather silent as was his usual fashion. The sun was already very high in the sky, and it spread its bright rays over them, even making some of the people listen longingly to the rustle of the waters in the river behind their backs.

"And Tae-san? Isn't she coming?" Megumi asked Kaoru. "I thought she had said yes."

The younger woman shrugged her shoulders, more attentive at the evolution of her son's conversation with his friend.

"She has to work. But she said she would try to arrive later, and hopefully bring some sweetmeats."

"A _whole year _in a cottage on top of a mountain training swordsmanship? That's what you do when you run away from home?" Outa still could not believe his ears. Kenji adopted a dignified pose, but lost it at the enervating sight of Hiko's expectant smirk. That damn old man just _had _to be in everything.

"I wasn't losing my time, okay? I got much stronger than what I was before, and I achieved what I wanted!"

Kaoru and Kenshin turned their heads towards his direction in some surprise, but neither of them said anything. Hiko's smirk was dangerously intensified, and Kenji swallowed before he was able to continue at all.

"Nah, pity that in the end the times had changed and all that, and I couldn't be a warrior. Still… well, I'd wish I could make a living with it, at least."

"You could teach at your mother's dojo," Outa suggested.

The expression in Kenji's face showed that the young man had already thought about that before.

"Hmmm…. I may want to open one myself. Or leave the business altogether. After all, it's not very productive right now," he retreated unexpectedly, making his mother's eyes grow much bigger. "And you? What are you doing right now?"

"Living," was Outa's answer.

The young red-haired man shook his head in a not-very-resigned-resignation. "Meaning to get money."

"Ah… Tsukioka's newspaper."

"Again?"

The tall and thin man grinned in consent.

"Again."

"I wonder why he hasn't thrown you out yet. You never hand him things in in time!"

Outa looked offended at this. "Hey! When I don't, it's for some important reason! That time was because there was that girl... And anyway, he's used to it. He has decided that when anything of mine happens to show up in his newspaper he uses it as an extra and lifts the price."

"Band of thieves…" Kenji smiled. "And how many times has the newspaper changed of name since I went away?"

"Belive me, you don't want to know. And even with that he had quite a pile of serious problems. The war has _them _on edge," Outa explained with a tired gesture. His friend, for a moment, could not help but send a fleeting glance to his father who looked interested by their conversation… and thought he had caught in his eyes, once again, part of that deep expression of melancholy that seized him sometimes. There was no doubt that he could understand most of the things said.

_The letters…If he could just publish one single paragraph of his letters, Katsuhiro-san would be able to raise more anti-Meiji sentiments than ever before, _he could not help but think. But, of course, that was impossible… his father got hysteric at the simple prospect of someone reading it. Maybe he was even right or next to the truth when he pretended that there were things that still depended on that secrecy.

"I wish you luck" he commented. He did not feel _any_ sympathy for the Meiji government right now, especially after what they had done to his father. "Fat, greedy politicians, they could have gone to China themselves!"

Kenshin and Kaoru looked at each other again, but their glances did not mirror each other's anymore. Kaoru looked slightly shocked, while Kenshin's smile widened.

"Hey!" In that moment, Yutaro stopped an animated discussion with Yahiko about the reversed blade that the latter had brought hidden in a package, in order to raise his voice for attention. "Isn't it already a good hour for having lunch? The smells are killing me."

"Good idea. But…" Tvhe oices subsided a bit, and the different groups stopped their conversations to look at Yahiko, who had got up behind his friend and was picking his package from the ground, "first, I demand your attention for just some time."

Before Kenji ever had the time to react, Hiko performed a quick movement and produced a sheathed sword from under the mantle, behind his back. While the red-haired young man was still wondering how he could have carried it all the way there without anybody noticing, he threw it to Yahiko, who caught it gracefully in the air. Kenji's glance then turned towards his father out of instinct, and he could see him nod repeated times.

_Surely, it couldn't be…_

"Any clue on what does this all mean?" he heard Misao whispering in a rather loud voice to the women sitting around her. Almost at once, she, Megumi and Franziska turned towards Tsubame, who blushed and started to apologise with a nervous smile. Kaoru was strangely calm, while Aoshi looked… interested.

All of a sudden, something whistled in the air in his direction, and he was barely able to catch it in his surprise. It was his old sword, the one he had used to practice in Hiko's house in Kyoto.

"Get ready, Kenji."

* * *

_Get ready._

Those words, engraved in his soul since long ago, had the power of immediately bringing him back to the shadows of a distant time.

_Get ready, Yahiko…_

_Begin!_

_A gift for your coming of age... _

_Take it._

During all his life, there had been some hazy recollections in his mind of that fight, which had been the first one he had ever witnessed. Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he could recall fragmented perceptions, like a quick flash of swords that frightened him in his mother's arms, Yahiko's yell, or his father's expression when he gave his prized sword away. He had been too young to know the meaning of all this, but he could remember the feeling of solemnity, of almost transcendental _importance _that the whole thing had presented. When he had been older, he had been unable to refrain from asking his mother… and that's how he had come to know the whole story of the passing of the reversed blade.

As a young boy, he remembered having held hopes of being the protagonist of a similar scene when he was old enough. After all, he had thought, shouldn't the reversed blade be his next by right? He would train very, very hard for that day, and he would be as strong as Yahiko, or even stronger than him. All those hopes, however, had slowly but inexorably dwindled with the course of time, as he saw his father losing his faculties and growing weaker and weaker, and he had cursed them in his growing bitterness and fury. Kenshin's absences had increased through the years, then he had got ill, and then he had left for good, leaving Kenji alone in the once dreamed day of his majority.

_And now…_

"Y…you?" Kenji muttered. "You're going to… test me?"

Yahiko's eyes were adamant, but for a moment he could see a smile on his lips.

"Yes. Even though it's late."

"Who will judge for them?" Yutaro intervened. Kaoru nodded with a serious expression.

"It's true. It should be Hiko-san's privilege."

All the eyes were now fixed on the old man, who chuckled and shook his head.

"I delegate on you, Kaoru-san."

The woman opened her mouth, but then closed it in surprise, and bowed in thanks. Slowly, and after answering Kenshin's accomplice grin, she stepped out from the crowd and joined the fighters.

"Well…which are the terms? One point?"

"No." Yahiko checked on Kenji, then looked at her. "Until one of us is disarmed or gives up."

"What's this?" Franziska was asking Yutaro in what she _pretended_ to be an undertone.

"A kenjutsu match, dear. It's like…what I do in my dojo, but with real swords, see?"

"But…won't they kill each other? That's horrible!"

"No, dear, they're master swordsmen, and their swords can't kill. Kenji's is blunt, and Yahiko's is reversed. You'll see…"

"Though well… if I were you I'd hurry," Misao intervened. "I don't know how it is in Tokyo, but in Kyoto I would be warning that someone might come and see us and give a weird reaction!"

"Misao is right, Kaoru…give the start. Are you ready, Kenji?"

"Uh… eh… yes." The young man had heard the things that each person had said to the others, but as if it was all something external, something that had nothing to do with him. It was only now, as he saw his mother in place and Yahiko taking his stance in front of him, when the meaning of the scene in which he had suddenly found himself started to sink into his brain.

His father was smiling to him_. _

"Get ready!"

Little by little, Kenji sheathed his sword, and eased his body into a precise Battou-Jutsu stance. His heart was thumping in his chest, as he felt the eyes of all those people fixed upon him, but he returned the smile. Yahiko took his own stance, with his sword held in front of his body.

_Would he be able to prove him at last…?_

He couldn't think on what would happen if he missed this chance. He _had _to concentrate, in order to win. He was learned in Mitsurugi Ryu, the most powerful sword school in Japan, and _both _had mastered Kamiya Kasshin.

_He **should **win._

"Begin!" the woman yelled, lowering her arm.

Kenji did not even have to think of a strategy before his body started moving on his own; his training with Hiko was still fresh on his mind, and the moves he was performing had become his second nature. As soon as he got behind his opponent with the godlike speed of the Mitsurugi and Yahiko blocked his strike, though, repelling him some metres away with a powerful clash, his mind was barely able to register his disadvantage in the middle of the frenzy, the thrusts and the parries.

_He had no fighting experience._

With renewed fury, he turned his defensive leap backwards into a new attack, and performed a somersault in the air before crashing down on Yahiko with a Ryu Tsui Sen. Again, his blade met another blade that repelled him back with another clash. He felt suddenly frantic.

_Kenji idiot, idiot, idiot,._ he grumbled under his breath, while he somehow managed to land correctly with his feet on the ground several metres away from Yahiko. His opponent took his stance once more, and time was frozen for a second.

He was an idiot, no doubt. He had thought that both of them shared the Kamiya Kasshin, but that he was the only one of them to know the moves and the techniques of the Hiten Mitsurugi. But the truth was that Yahiko had seen and studied those moves countless times, as he had watched his father fight. He had seen many people fight, and had fought them himself. While he…

Biting his lips in bitter determination, Kenji advanced towards the waiting Yahiko, and prepared himself to deal a strong strike. Acrobatics would bring him nowhere, and flippancy wouldn't either. In fact, he might as well... lose, after all.

A fierce yell coming from two throats at the same time rang in the air, as both swords cut the air towards their target. When the blur slowly came into focus, the breathless spectators were able to see Yahiko standing in a strike position, and Kenji falling to his knees, clutching his shoulder.

Silence was absolute for a second… two seconds. Then, the young man's ears rang with breaths, murmurs, and finally voices commenting what had happened.

"Is he... is he hurt?" Franziska was asking in worry.

"Seems Yahiko won in the end...," Misao said.

"Yes," Hiko intervened. "Unless my stupid pupil can get up after taking that."

"Kaoru-san, have you become a statue? Signal the end of the match!"

"Kenji…"

The young man bit his teeth, and concentrated himself into breathing deeply. It hurt, but the blow hadn't been _too _strong. His grip on the hilt of his sword tightened, and he suppressed a curse. Damn.

"Kenji… my son…"

As if he had received a sudden attack, the head of the red-haired fighter jerked upwards, and his eyes met those of his father. They were full of love and concern, and also… _pride_?

"It's very good. Very good," he repeated. "You… did enough."

Kenji lowered his head again, to prevent the rest of the people from seeing his face turn purple red. His father was condescending, as with a child. Convincing him that he was good _enough_ even though he hadn't been able to win for him. Remembrances of all he had trained in order to show him what he could do flashed through his mind, almost drowning him in frustration.

_Unless you're stupid enough as to believe that to know you're better than him will frustrate him, only an option occurs to me, and it's that you simply need his approval._

Hiko's words came back to his mind, and his shame increased. For years, he had been bent unto this. Bent unto an useless, sterile endeavour while his mother wasted away alone, and his sick father called for him. And now, definitely, it seemed that everything he had tried to do wasn't even enough as to show _him _that he had grown.

"Kenji?" Now it was Yahiko's puzzled voice addressing him. "Kenji…what..?"

He saw his father again, sitting on his couch at dawn and wrapping himself in a blanket. His expression was weary, his body frail, but there was hope shining in his eyes.

_"No! Not yet," he pleaded in a shaky tone, surprising even himself with his words. "Don't leave yet! You promised... you promised you would be here on my birthday. The last one. Please… don't leave, yet."_

Suddenly, the weight of all those years of anger, of quiet suffering and loneliness for his mother, and of obsessed and selfish fixation in surpassing a shadow for him, crashed against his mind, as well as his father's silent agony of a whole month, sitting upright with a smile while his insides were torn apart. Always smiling, for him. Always smiling… even now. And for once…

For once, and for the first time in all his life, Kenji's heart could feel the meaning of atonement. Of feeling the need to pay something back to a person in the measure of one's possibilities… or beyond.

"Not yet…" he breathed, standing up. Everybody stared at him in shock, except Hiko, who smirked, and Aoshi, who nodded in approval.

"Kenji, aren't you…?" Kaoru advanced a hesitant step towards him, and Yahiko dropped his stance.

"Don't lower your guard!" the red-haired young man shouted. "You were holding back when you hit me, you idiot!"

After a mere second of hesitation, maybe of… recognition, the samurai's face adopted again the impenetrable battle glance, and he did as he was told. Kaoru retreated without any further comment, and both fighters got in position. Silence was absolute once more, as people's eyes were all fixed upon the renewed exchange.

"If you still can… then do it."

Kenji checked his shoulder with some anxiety before launching his attack. It was sore and somewhat numb, but, he realised in relief, it would function for a while yet. Maybe it would slow his speed if he had to fight for longer, but if he did what he had planned… it would be perfect.

_It could not fail._

Smiling to himself, the young man gave a yell and charged forwards at a slowed speed. Yahiko, surely in the wrong belief that the shoulder was giving him problems, charged as well, but before their swords met Kenji's foot stopped firmly, and his body gave a whole turn around it. The speed was so enormous that the air whistled in his ears like a windstorm, and his shoulder hurt like hell, but he paid no heed to all those sensations that distracted him from his sole and unique purpose.

"Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu, Ryu Kan Sen!"(3)

Kenji's blade stopped at an inch of Yahiko's neck. With a smile slowly taking the place of his astonished expression, the samurai loosened his grip on the hilt of his own sword, and the reversed blade fell to the ground with a clatter.

* * *

When he was at last able to snap out of his battle concentration and pay heed to his surroundings, Kenji heard some claps and praises coming from beyond his circle of friends. Astonished, he saw that several passers-by were standing next to them, murmuring things to each other.

"Oh, no," Yahiko muttered. "Problems."

Kaoru ran immediately towards her son, and, after pulling him into an embrace, she started touching and checking his shoulder in spite of his protests. Soon enough, however, Misao claimed her attention in a rather urgent way.

"Kaoru-san, there's… police!"

"What?" The woman lifted her head in alarm. "One of the swords is blunt, the other is rever… but… uh?" In the middle of her sentence, as she looked in the direction of the police agent who was watching - and cheering the loudest -, her expression changed again. "Shin'ichi!" (2)

"Talk about dumb luck," Yutaro commented, shaking his head. "We're too reckless."

"Is this forbidden?" Franziska asked, as she clutched his arm in anxiety.

"More or less," Megumi explained for him.

"What a wonderful display of swordsmanship! Like in the old times! And what a hero, Kenji-kun… he had been floored and he got up again, fuelled by his warrior spirit… and he defeated Yahiko-sensei! And what an awesome move!" The enthusiastic policeman soon became the target of the curious glances of the people around. When he noticed, at last, he began to scratch the back of his neck in sudden awkwardness. "Uh… er…" he stammered, clearing his throat and struggling to return to an official tone. "Those… people are owners and masters of a famous Tokyo dojo, and are allowed to do public performances once a year in our city. Uramura-san can confirm it!"

"What a cheek," Kaoru muttered.

"As much as he grows, he'll always be the same," Yahiko added while he rolled his eyes.

"Have a good day!" the policeman cried, waving them a hand merrily and shooing the people away from the place. Our friends stayed frozen in place for some moments, all with their eyes fixed in his direction, then slowly started to return to their usual selves.

"Kenji… you won!" Kaoru hugged her son once more, and continued her examination. "But your shoulder! Tomorrow it will be all blue."

"Mother…" Kenji complained. Tsubame got up to place herself next to Yahiko, who smiled to her and put an arm around her shoulder before turning to Kenji.

"We congratulate you, Kenji. You did it very well, and you won," he said. "And you're really an adult now."

"You kicked his ass big time," Yutaro laughed, evading his friend's warning look. "That's our Kenji!"

"You're so strong!" Franziska took the cue soon enough, and with great pleasure. "And brave!"

"That was a good fight, Kenji," Misao nodded knowingly. Beside her, though, Megumi shook her head with somewhat less enthusiasm.

"That shoulder…," she sighed. "Completely like his father!"

"Ah... so you did _something_ in that boring lonely mountain, after all," Outa offered magnanimously. Aoshi turned his head towards Hiko.

"That made me think of old times." he commented with a wry smile. The old master leaned back, looking satisfied with himself, and both their glances fell inadvertently upon Kenshin.

"Seems I was able to teach him some things, after all. Right… Shinta?"

The sick man had spent all the time after Kenji's counterattack with his eyes fixed upon the improvised scenario of the fight. Not a single muscle of his had moved, but he wasn't just mind-clouded. Hiko could perceive a great intensity of tumultuous emotions springing from his ki.

"Kenshin!" Yahiko called. The samurai picked the reversed blade from the ground, and made a signal for Kenji to come. Then, he gave it to Kenshin, but the weight he had carried so nonchalantly was about to fall from the hands of the older man, who was almost incapable of bearing its weight anymore.

"Here you are. You should be the one to hand it on."

Kenji felt the instinctive urge to help his father, though something prevented him from doing it this time. He could hear his mother's irregular and excited breath behind his back, and felt everybody's eyes fixed on him again. Almost numb to all the congratulations and praises, now, in front of those violet eyes clouded by emotion, he was at last able to feel his heart swelling with pride and happiness.

_He had won for **him**._

"Kenji…" His father's voice sounded hoarse. He looked so frail sitting there, trying to hold the heavy sword with his shaking hands… but he was surprisingly able to give him a clear glance and search for the adequate words. "It's late… and I'm sorry. You're a man, Kenji. Take this… it's yours, now."

Unable to stand the sight of how his father tried to no avail to lift the sword in order to offer it, Kenji knelt on the ground in front of him, and took it in his own hands with reverence. Before he even could realise too well what was happening, two bony arms encircled his body, and a familiar sickening scent invaded his nostrils.

"Kenji…I'm so proud!" To the young man's astonishment, Kenshin's body was convulsed in soft sobs. Behind them, he could perceive some gasps of surprise, even the stressed breaths of other people who, like his mother, were being also unable to control their emotions. He himself couldn't prevent a knot from forming in his stomach and throat that rendered him incapable of speech or motion for a very long while.

It was the first time he saw his father cry. Sick, suffering, his defenceless mind floating between the mists of confusion and moments of lucidity… he had never, ever cried.

"Thank you, Father," he managed to utter at last, as he gently pulled away from him and got up with his prize in his hands. His shoulder ached so much when he put it in state of stress… or was it his heart, not able to contain so many emotions in a matter of seconds? "Thank you very much. Now… why don't we let the party begin?"

"Kenji is right." Kaoru was doing frantic efforts to wipe away the tears in her cheeks without letting the people notice. "Lunch is waiting for us!"

"Well, well…" Hiko poured some sake in his cup with his usual expertise, and turned to Aoshi. "It seems that my stupid student was even able to change the ideal of the sword!"

* * *

But the day of surprises was not yet over, in the very least. After they had fallen in ravenous hunger over the sweetmeats that waited for them on the ground, and their wish for food and drink gradually had diminished between conversations and jokes, Kenshin suddenly lifted his face, and they could see his eyes widen in alert.

"He is… he…" he began to mumble. Kaoru looked at him with a strange expression.

"Yes, Shinta?"

"He. He is here," Kenshin offered as only explanation. The rest of the people started to cross inquiring glances in all directions… but, just as they were at it, a cheerful female voice called in greeting.

"Tae-san!" Kaoru cried happily, getting up. At the mention of her best friend, Tsubame followed her example, in spite of Yahiko telling her she should rest. "And with… uh? That's _not _her husband!"

Megumi winked mischievously, though her wink was soon to turn into an expression of purest shock at the next shout that came from Kaoru's mouth.

"It's… Sano!"

"_Sano_?" Yahiko got to his feet at an inhuman speed, and so did Misao.

"My brother?" Outa exclaimed. Megumi turned her head slowly, just in time to see the newcomers approach the place where they were sitting. The woman who was waving her hand was Tae, no doubt… but the tall man who walked next to her looked rather like someone from a faraway land. He wore unbelievably dirty trousers that one day might have been white, and his torso was bandaged. On his shoulders, there was a green, torn cape which fell down his back and flickered at the whim of the wind, mimicking the movements of his long, unruly dark hair that was kept from his face by a red headband. In his unshaven face, however, there was a broad smile that looked decidedly familiar, and characteristic of only one person in the world that they could know. It was Sanosuke, the world adventurer… who did not hesitate in sneaking inside the country whenever he wanted to see his friends, even if he was still searched by the police for assaulting an important politician.

"Hey, people! Look _who _I found at the old restaurant!" the waitress cried. Kaoru had reached them by now, and for a second she stopped to stare at Sano. Yahiko and Misao, who came behind her, stopped in imitation.

"You're even dirtier than ever!" the woman exclaimed in mock reprobation.

"And he still hasn't paid me back," Tae added thoughtfully.

"What a welcome!" Sano feigned indignation too. "Should have stayed in China… the women there treated me better!"

"They like dirt there, maybe?" Yahiko joked, punching him playfully. Sanosuke punched him back, and the young man was projected against an unsuspecting Misao.

"Be more careful, you jerk!" she shouted at the top of her lungs. Fortunately, before she jumped over him for retaliation, Yahiko was able to grab her dress and yank her back.

"Sheesh… here's the weasel, and the fox too! I think I'm leaving again…"

"Don't you dare do that, Sagara Sanosuke!" Kaoru trapped him in a happy bear hug, and for a second she looked again like the innocent and carefree girl she had once been. "I'm so glad that you're here..!"

"I came because…" Before the man was able to give his explanations, though, he stopped himself in renewed surprise. "Outa!"

"Hello, brother," the young man said with a grin, coming towards them.

"Still hanging around here. Feh! At your age I had already seen half the world!"

"And missed most of it, I'm sure," Outa answered. Kenji got up to follow him, and joined them in their walk towards the place of the party.

"Hey, Sano! Do you know that you and Outa look _really _alike!" he whistled.

"But I'm more handsome," the younger brother added. Sanosuke protested.

"Hey! It's _me _who's supposed to say that!"

"According to the taste of _which _country?"

As they entered the circle, the first person they met was Megumi, who was sitting with her face towards them. Like always, she seemed successful in smothering her agitation.

"Fox lady! Did you miss me too much?" the newcomer greeted her. The woman shook her head airily, and swallowed a small knot in her throat.

"And you, did you miss water? Here you have a whole river at your service…"

"Always so kind!" Sanosuke shot back.

"At least he catches them on the first time, now," she nodded in approval, provoking a shy giggle from Tsubame, who was trying to explain Franziska who that tall and dirty man was. Sanosuke's attention, however, was already elsewhere. His surprised eyes wandered over Aoshi and Hiko, and finally were set on Kenshin, who was looking at him with a gleeful smile.

"But what's this?" he cried. "A congress of old warriors?"

"Kenji's coming of age, you moron," Hiko answered, a bit offended.

"Still the same, Sagara," Aoshi commented while he picked an ohagi from the plate. Sanosuke, maybe to prove them that he _wasn't _the same, ignored them, and knelt in front of his best friend, next to where Kaoru had already taken back her place.

"Kenshin…" he began. As he talked, he could not stop checking his friend's state, his frailty, his bandaged limbs and his clouded eyes, and his smile started to dim a bit. "I was around Manchuria when somebody told me you were there. I hurried to see you, but when I got to the place they told me you had left. They said you were very ill… and I… "His voice sounded strange, or so Kaoru thought…she had never saw him so awkward before. "Well, you know, I decided to pay a small visit to Japan again. I was already halfways there, so to speak!"

"Sano…" To the tall man's surprise, his friend made him a signal to get closer… and when he obeyed unsuspectingly, he was pulled into a hug similar to the one Kenji had been pulled into shortly ago. His eyes widened, but he was too shocked as to say a word. What…?

_He smelled even worse than him…_

Was he…?

He remembered the last time he had come back, about four years ago. Kenshin had saddened him with his weakness, but that had been the price to pay for the techniques he had mastered and used during a great part of his life. Now, however…

_He had some infectious disease, and he was requested to go back home…I heard it was syphilis or something of the sort, but I cannot tell…_

That was what he had been told, but he hadn't quite believed it until now he saw it with his own eyes. Could he… _really _be dying? The man he had once thought to be almost immortal, invincible… diminished, defeated by something so unheroical?

"Sano…" Kenshin repeated once more, clutching the fabric of his cape. "Thank you. Thank you… for coming."

His eyes were caught by Kaoru's in a flicker of a second, and he saw his expression mirrored in them. Then, as he eased Kenshin back into his initial sitting position with all the gentleness he was able to muster, he turned towards Megumi, and was able to perceive the tension in her hands as she tried to put order in the leftovers scattered around her.

"Well, people," he exclaimed, after closing his eyes and inhaling deeply to regain his composure. "Want to hear some travel stories?"

* * *

A couple of hours later, when the sun was already in the middle of his course downwards, Kenji was still listening attentively and laughing at the anecdotes that Sanosuke told them. He was a great storyteller, and, knowing him, as strange or impossible that might seem sometimes, what he told was only the truth. What he said about the world and the people he had visited never failed to awake a deep longing inside him, now more than ever since he knew that most probably he would have little chances to leave Japan.

_Unlike Outa…_

Part of that longing was also caused by the knowledge of this sad truth; that his friend would soon leave as well and try his luck in all those places he had often dreamed about since he was young. But he had to admit that, in a way, it was only fair. Each one had his own life and his own duty, and his, right now, was there in Japan. He threw another proud glance at his now most prized possession, safely wrapped in his lap, and a smile took over his features.

_He was a man, now._

"Kaoru-dono..." he heard his father's voice behind him. His mother gave her husband an inquiring glance, but when she saw his eyes she seemed to understand at once.

"Right now, Shinta," she answered in a calming tone. With all care, she got up and helped Kenshin to struggle to his feet. As soon as she noticed what Hiko had known that same morning, however, that he couldn't stand up alone anymore, she supported him strongly, and let her body lean on hers. "Excuse us, please. We return in a minute."

Sanosuke and Kenji nodded almost at the same time, and the others looked at them briefly before turning back to the former and asking him for more tales with their silent glances. The humid warmth of spring had spread even over the shades of the riverside, and, mingled with the pleasant feeling of having one's stomach full of delicious drink and food, it had by now managed to infest the whole group with a hazy feeling of total laziness. Misao had sat next to Aoshi and was snoring softly, Tsubame was resting on Yahiko, Yutaro on Franziska, and Outa on a log as they listened to Sano's voice, while Megumi kept absently fanning herself with a leaf. In the distance, they could hear the soft sound of the water current rolling endlessly over the round stones of its bed, and, even farther, the laughs and shouts of other people who were having similar reunions at other zones of the river.

"Curious." Kenji opened his eyes in surprise, and turned them towards Aoshi, who was still staring at the couple that slowly walked away.

"What's curious?" he asked.

"The cross-shaped scar Himura used to have in his left cheek," the ninja muttered pensively. "It wasn't there anymore when he left."

While not knowing very well why, the young man felt a small commotion in his stomach at that unexpected information.

"Really?" he asked. Sanosuke had just made people laugh again, and nobody seemed to have noticed their conversation. "Are you sure?"

"Positive."

"Curious…" Kenji let his hand lay on the wrapped sword on his lap, and tightened his grip on it. "Really curious…"

Still thoughtful after a while of wondering about the strange phenomenon, but as unable as in the beginning to spot the true reason of his uneasiness, the young red-haired man bit his lips, and turned back to listen to his friends' conversation.

(to be continued)

(1)Outa also had the "Aku" kanji on his back. In the 26th volume, he asked his sister to put it on his own clothes, in imitation of his brother.

(2) Kosaburo Shin-ichi is a young policeman who appears in the Jinchuu arc. He studied in the Kamiya dojo according to Volume 28.

(3)According to Watsuki, Kenji learned Hiten techniques.

w


	10. Chapter Nine: Eclipse

**Note: **And here it is! The end (of many things)! Nah, don´t cry. Please….starts massive Kleenex distribution

Many thanks for all those who reviewed, and also to Margit Ritzka for beta. I really didn´t think I´d EVER finish this!

**Eclipse**

**Chapter Nine: Eclipse**

He watched, fascinated, how the liquid fell to the ground. The little rivers that it formed continued their course at a quickly decreasing speed, and he saw each one turn into several until they were all dried and swallowed by the humid earth. Then, he felt those hands again, touching him and fumbling with his clothes, and the feeling of shame returned stronger than ever.

_His head hurt. _

"Done!" her voice sang with a happy tone. "Now, come on, let's rejoin the others!"

He felt himself being yanked forwards, and, for a moment, the terror of falling overwhelmed him. His efforts to resist it were frantic, but they only made the wave of pain return to his whole body. She was pulling him ahead, inexorably and heedless to his suffering or his silent pleas. _How…_couldn't she notice?

"Don't worry, Shinta, we'll be there soon! You'll be able to rest then, I promise."

The spirits were bustling with activity behind him. He tried to gasp for air and brace himself for the agony, but the frantic speed increased, and, horrified, he felt his legs giving way under his body. No more… He could take no more…

A familiar body supported him in his fall.

"Shinta?"

Profiting of those brief seconds in which, at last, he was able to breathe deeply, he tried to calm himself and opened his mouth. His voice sounded hoarse, gurgling, with a hysterical tinge that scratched his own ears.

"Please… Please… _No more_!"

The body in contact with his tensed, and he could hear the spirits murmuring things. His gaze met a pair of blue eyes that glimmered with concern, and he felt the instinctive urge to comfort her, only that he couldn't. The pangs were now shaking his chest, and he had to put all his efforts not to yell with all his remaining forces. He had to hide it. He had to hide everything…

_His mind was strong._

"I'm sorry. I'm very sorry, Shinta…" The voice sounded much less happy than before. Then, her strong arms lowered him gently, and he could feel his aching limbs resting at last against solid ground from which they couldn't fall anymore. His head was carefully placed in the warmth and softness of her lap, and, as the spirits made a circle around them, his lips curved into a smile of relief.

_She smelled of blood and flowers._

"Are you feeling better already?" she asked him. The pain had dwindled very much now, so he nodded weakly in assent. Sunrays were brushing his face and playing with the locks of his hair, but, by a sharp contrast, his body felt as cold as it never had been before. Almost frozen.

"I'm… cold…" he tried to mutter. He never got to open his lips. Her calloused hands brushed his forehead repeatedly, and he relaxed.

_Mother…_

In spite of his state, a comforting warmth spread through his limbs at the image, and he closed his eyes in contented happiness. She was there as she had always been, to make him feel well whenever he ached. She knelt beside him, and he buried his head at her chest, feeling the peculiar smell of sweat and tanned skin of her naked breasts. And she kissed him on the forehead….

At this point, sudden nausea got hold of him once more, and he felt panic rising as his eyes snapped wide open in horror and alarm. She wasn't there anymore. He had seen her fall, broken and bleeding in his arms, after he had….

_He had…_

He had… killed her?

"Shinta… What's the matter?"

The sound of that voice again brought such relief to his misery that his body was almost wrecked in sobs. No, she was alive. She was there, pressing his head against her warm body, and she was kissing his forehead.

_It felt so nice…_

A soft wind was starting to blow over the treetops, whispering among the branches of the cherry trees, and stealing flocks of petals that danced in the air at its whim and then fell to the ground with a rustle. The sun was already on its slow way down, and the growing red brilliance of its rays was vividly reflected on the running waters of the river. Far away, he could hear the laughs and cries of a group of people who were having fun together.

_The spirits were drawing closer._

"Shinta… are you asleep? Shinta…"

He smiled sadly, but still tried his best to send her a reassuring glance before he closed his eyes. Now he could see the spirits much more clearly, and, astonished, he realised that they were not cruelly mute and deaf corpses anymore, as they had been every single time that he had tried to address them during his life. Their eyes were open, and they were all looking at him. In the countenances of some he found pity, in others contempt; some were staring at him with indifference, some with glaring hate, and lastly, a few of them had a peaceful smile on their lips._ She _was among those, waiting for him…

"Shinta!"

_"Shinta!"_

Wet but warm drops of something fell on his face, and trickled down his cheeks. The hand that had been caressing his forehead went downwards now, and started to touch his face shakily until it lay still, as if struck by a paralyzing commotion. Shinta kissed it in silent apology, and finally got up, to meet the hundreds of people he had killed.

_They would listen to him now…_

(The end)


End file.
